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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24191026">Nature Red in Tooth and Claw</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio'>Sholio</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Punisher (TV 2017)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Werewolf, Angst, Gen, Hurt and vulnerable werewolf at the brink of death is found by comforter, Hurt/Comfort, Psychological Trauma, Touch-starved werewolf gets a lot of petting, Werewolves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-15</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-03 00:41:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>21,607</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24191026</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Six months after David had his last sight of Frank being dragged off by Billy Russo's goons, he finds Frank again in an underground fight club.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Frank Castle &amp; David "Micro" Lieberman, Frank Castle &amp; David "Micro" Lieberman &amp; Sarah Lieberman</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Hurt Comfort Exchange 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Nature Red in Tooth and Claw</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts">Edonohana</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Content warning: contains fairly graphic depictions of animal harm. All harmed animals are transformed humans (this is clear in the story) but there are descriptions of shapeshifters in their animal forms fighting and being hurt and killed, in case that might be upsetting.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The place was a dungeon -- a cavern -- an arena. The tunnels had been cold getting here (David had been able to see his breath; he shoved his hands in the pockets of his hoodie and hunched his head down, all too aware of the massive, neckless guide/escort who had followed him in from the door). But once they got to the main attraction, in some kind of big, low-ceilinged, brick-walled space, it was warm here from massed-together bodies. Warm and loud.</p><p>He couldn't believe a place like this existed underneath the city, a place he'd never heard of -- a place it had taken him months to find. It would have surprised David less, perhaps, if it hadn't been so close to home. They were underneath Manhattan, for crying out loud. He never would have guessed it was here, hidden among all the old, abandoned subway routes and bootleggers' tunnels and walled-up cellars and all the rest of the hidden, half-mythical understory of the city.</p><p>Sports had never been David's kind of thing, but he'd gone to a few boxing matches with his dad, long ago. This wasn't that different, though rougher and wilder. It was pretty much exactly what he would have imagined an underground fight club would look like. The crowd was mostly male, a rough-looking bunch. Money and cans of beer exchanged hands. There must be a couple hundred people here. He couldn't see anyone visibly in charge, and the Neckless Wonder left him at the edge of the crowd.</p><p>"Do I tip?" David said over his shoulder, but Neckless had already turned to talk to the equally neckless guard at the door, dismissing him.</p><p>David made his way around the edges of the crowd. It had taken him six months to get here, using a combination of digital sleuthing and old-fashioned detective work. Much of which had been Sarah; it turned out his wife had hidden talents for getting information out of people that he never would have expected. Maybe he'd quit his government job and they'd open a detective agency or something.</p><p>So far so good, though. Nobody had ratted him out yet, and his painstakingly acquired passwords, as well as a fistful of cash, had gotten him in.</p><p>He couldn't see the ring in the poor lighting, but he could figure out where it was by the knot of spectators crowded around it, yelling encouragement to the fighters. The air stank of sweat and blood and testosterone. The shouting was almost deafening, although they were drowned out at one point by the clatter of a passing subway train, right on the other side of the wall.</p><p>If he was right -- if everything he'd done so far wasn't in vain -- Frank would be here somewhere. Maybe in the crowd. Maybe in the ring.</p><p>David swallowed, and started pushing his way through the spectators. This wasn't the sort of crowd where you apologized when you stepped on someone's foot or spilled their beer, and he used his elbows and knees, and a few tricks he'd learned from Frank, to make a path for himself through the packed-in bodies. He tried to look at faces without looking like he was staring. He didn't see Frank anywhere.</p><p>Finally he made it to the ring. Except it wasn't a ring; it was a pit. Maybe an old cistern, about eight or ten feet deep, its concrete floor layered with old stains. There was a guy down there, bare to the waist, covered with blood. Not Frank. Definitely not Frank.</p><p>And he was fighting a bear.</p><p>*</p><p>It had been six months since David had last seen Frank Castle. Six months since Frank had traded himself to Rawlins and Russo for David and his family's safety. David's last sight of him, through cracked-open eyes as he lay on cold wet concrete and tried to breathe shallowly enough to pretend to be dead, was Frank being dragged into Russo's van.</p><p>And after that, he was gone. Billy Russo and his little militia had vanished into thin air, slipped through Homeland Security's fingers. </p><p>Oh, they'd found plenty, all right -- just not Frank. David led them to the bunker, and that was where they found his equipment trashed, blood everywhere, and William Rawlins dead on the floor. It only took David one glance to see that Rawlins was really, thoroughly dead, and he twisted away, swallowing rapidly. <i>Jeez, Frank. Not taking any chances, were you?</i></p><p>"So I'll just ... get the security footage," he choked out, and made his way toward the computers.</p><p>"The computers are destroyed," Madani said. "Can you get anything back?"</p><p>David didn't bother answering that, just hooked up a laptop and went to work, trying to focus past the cloying reek of blood ... which he was getting worryingly familiar with, hanging around Frank. Should be a breeze if the trashed equipment was anything to go by; these guys knew nothing about computers, they just went for the visible equipment and didn't even consider the possibility of offsite backups. The question was whether they'd managed to destroy the cameras before or after whatever went down with Frank and Rawlins.</p><p>He found the files, opened the last couple minutes of footage.</p><p>Stared at it.</p><p>And then his fingers slammed on the keys, and he was typing -- fast -- as Madani came over, asking, "Did you find something?"</p><p>DELETE ALL</p><p>"-- like he was mauled by a wild animal," someone on Madani's team was saying, in the background.</p><p>"No," David said. "Sorry. It's all gone."</p><p>*</p><p>They were free. David. Sarah. The entire family. He had everything he wanted back: his kids, his wife, his job.</p><p>It was true that Russo was still in the wind. They had a security detail on them for a few weeks, but there was no sign of danger, and eventually things drifted back to ... well ...</p><p>Normal, was the idea. But how could you go back to normal after all of that?</p><p>How could he, how could <i>they</i> be normal after the things they'd seen and done, the things <i>he'd</i> done. How could he live an ordinary life with Frank still out there and an impossible set of images burning their way into the backs of his retinas when he closed his eyes?</p><p>A hundred times, in those early weeks, he started to tell Sarah what he'd seen on the security footage, but never quite made it. Those were rough weeks. They were all waking up from nightmares. Zach was fighting at school again. He kept walking in on Sarah wiping her eyes and pretending she hadn't just been crying. There were fights, between all of them, more than they'd ever had before. The entire family was made of jagged edges, grinding against each other. </p><p>And then, finally, he had a quiet talk with Sarah in the kitchen. Not about what he really wanted to talk about -- he wasn't there, not yet. But there were other things they needed to talk about. And then they called the kids in.</p><p>"A year ago, I made some bad choices," David said, looking each of them in the face, trying not to see how much older the kids were, how much they'd changed without him. "I did what I thought was right, but I did it without taking into account how much it would affect any of you." He looked around between his family, the three people he loved more than anyone else in the world. "I'm not doing that again. If we do this, we're doing this as a family."</p><p>"Doing what, dad?" Leo asked. The kids' eyes were fixed on him, wide and intent.</p><p>"Your dad wants to look for Pete -- for Frank," Sarah said.</p><p>"And if that's not the decision we make, together," David said, "we'll -- I don't know, do something else -- kids?"</p><p>Because the kids had both lit up, and now they high-fived each other. "We've been talking about it too," Zach said, and Leo nodded.</p><p>"I know some people we could maybe talk to," she put in.</p><p>"You ... what," David said, staring at them.</p><p>"Told you," Sarah murmured.</p><p>David found himself half-laughing in a mix of relief and that shuddery half-hysterical way that he reacted to stress. "Guys ... you remember what happened before, right? You know how dangerous this could be? I don't want you in danger."</p><p>"Oh yeah, way to keep us out of danger so far, Dad," Zach said scornfully.</p><p>"Zach," Sarah said, and leaned over to kiss her son's head, pulling him against her side.</p><p>So that was it. Decision made.</p><p>The other thing ... he kept to himself, for the time being.</p><p>*</p><p>The first thing David did was prepare a couple of back doors. He talked to Madani first of all, and secured her promise to get them into Witness Protection if anyone came after them, reasons unspecified.</p><p>"Do you anticipate anyone coming after you, Lieberman?"</p><p>"Do you know how high up this goes?" David countered. "Yeah, me neither. And Russo's in the wind; so is Castle."</p><p>At that, Madani looked evasive.</p><p>"You know something," David said.</p><p>"No," she said, looking him straight in the eyes. "I don't."</p><p>But that was enough to get him on the scent, bloodhound-strong. There <i>was</i> something out there to find. Madani had found some hint of a trail. Maybe she wouldn't share, but he didn't need her to share. He'd found Frank once. He could do it again.</p><p>So that was back door number one, the official one.</p><p>Back door number two was cash and fake identities. Just in case. He had no idea if they'd need any of it; in fact, he really, really hoped they didn't. But he'd had plenty of practice during his year on the run. He set up accounts, started some little money trickles going to fill them, secured some running funds in cash. The kids didn't know about this part. Sarah did.</p><p>"Are you sure about this?" he asked quietly. They were in her car, late at night. They'd just secured another go bag and escape packet of money and IDs in a hiding place they'd found up the Hudson River Valley, at a camping site where they used to go when they were first married, before the kids. There was a remote likelihood someone might look under the floorboards of the old cabin, but David doubted it, at least not any time soon.</p><p>There was a thin moon on the horizon, and Sarah's hand clasped in his, while she drove. The kids were with Sarah's mom, under the pretext that David and Sarah needed a night out. David knew that the kids knew they were up to something, but they were as dedicated to the secret mission as David and Sarah; they weren't going to talk to Grandma about it.</p><p>Fuck's sake. What had he done? He'd broken his family again, just in a different way this time.</p><p>Sarah squeezed his hand, with her other hand steady on the wheel, eyes fixed on the moon-washed highway. "Yes," she said. "I'm sure. We owe him everything. We're going to get him back, no matter what it takes."</p><p>With that, he made a decision. He might not be able to tell the kids, but he had to tell Sarah. No more secrets, not between them. "Turn off the road for a minute, honey."</p><p>Sarah opened her mouth, then closed it in a grim line. She slammed on the brakes and made a sharp 90-degree turn, pulling into the parking lot of a closed fast-food restaurant. David was flung against the door and then into his seat belt when she skidded to a halt with the car pointing the other way. Fortunately it was the middle of the night and traffic was light this far out of the city.</p><p>"What is it?" Sarah asked. "What? Are we being followed?"</p><p>She looked as wild-eyed as David felt. "No," he said, heart rate slowing. "No, sweetheart, no." He leaned to kiss her, and then hugged her, feeling her heart hammering. She leaned into him for a minute before she pushed him away and swatted him on the shoulder.</p><p>"You scared me half to death. What's the matter with you?"</p><p>"Sorry," he said, heartfelt. This was what they'd come to, seeing phantom enemies behind every tree. "I just wanted to talk to you. There's something I haven't told you about Frank."</p><p>"This is about Frank? ... of course it's about Frank." She leaned her head back against the seat, then reached for the thermos of coffee in the cup holder. "Did you find out something new?"</p><p>"Not really. Sort of." David rubbed his hands together, fidgeted with the seat belt. "This is going to be hard to believe. I mean, I hardly believe it, and I saw the security footage. I wish I'd kept it, but I couldn't let them get it ... "</p><p>"David."</p><p>"It's about the footage of what happened in the bunker after Russo took Frank," David said quietly.</p><p>And he told her. Told her about the grainy footage of Frank lunging against his bonds, battered and beaten and tortured. Of the way Frank had blurred and stretched into something impossible, something <i>not human</i>, something that had thrown itself at Rawlins, bearing him down to the floor.</p><p>David had read the autopsy report later, having at first asked Madani for it, and when that was refused, went behind her back and got it through his own channels. It hadn't been a pleasant thing to read. The coroner couldn't determine what kind of weapon had been used. His conclusion was that Rawlins might have had dogs set on him. No non-human DNA was found at the site, though, and they found Castle's blood on him.</p><p>Sarah stared at him for a long while after he finished speaking. Finally she said, "You're telling me Frank Castle is a werewolf." Her voice was flat and noncommittal.</p><p>"I <i>know!"</i> David said. Now that he'd finally come out with it, he was desperate to have her believe him. "I know, I know what it sounds like, I <i>know.</i> But I swear to you, the thing about seeing that video is that it made so many other things about Frank click into place. It was like the missing piece of a puzzle I've been putting together in my head the whole time I've known him."</p><p>"Like what kind of things?"</p><p>"Like ... the way he can find people; it's uncanny. The quiet way he moves. The way he disappears and reappears, like he can walk through walls, almost ..."</p><p>He wasn't convincing her; he could see it. Maybe you had to know Frank for this: Frank the hunter, not Pete, the gentler and more civilized version she'd known. Maybe you had to see the feral gleam in Frank's eyes, the way he held himself when he was struggling not to kill someone -- or when he <i>was</i> killing someone, as if the gun was a poor substitute for doing it with his bare hands.</p><p>"Could it have been tricks of the light?" she asked. "Shadows?" She took David's face between her hands, gazed into his eyes. "David, sweetheart ... werewolves aren't <i>real."</i></p><p>"I know." He was starting to doubt his own recollections, not for the first time. Seeing the footage in the room that had become a bloody abattoir, it had been easy to believe. But with time and distance, he had started to wonder. He'd been stressed and exhausted and desperately worried about Frank. And he'd seen the footage only once, and only a small part of it. Maybe, maybe ...</p><p>"I mean, he's Special Forces, right?" Sarah went on.</p><p>"Marine Recon," David murmured.</p><p>"Yeah, whatever, but between that, and everything he's gone through -- I guess what I'm saying is, there are a lot of things that could make a person the way Frank is, David. Plausible things."</p><p>"I know," he said.</p><p>Sarah kissed him, then released him and turned back to restart the engine. "Let's get on back home. We've still got a few hours before the sun rises and the kids come home."</p><p>He couldn't argue with that. But as he lay entwined with Sarah in the gray light before dawn, worn out and half asleep, he found his mind drifting back to those weeks in the bunker with Frank.</p><p>His rational mind told him he was nuts. And the more time that went by, the more he was inclined to believe it. But still, there was something about Frank, something really <i>different.</i> And it <i>wasn't</i> just that he was a veteran, it wasn't just the trauma. It was something intrinsic to him.</p><p>It sounded crazy even to think it, but what it came down to was that David had seen the wolf in Frank's eyes. And nothing had made more sense in the world than seeing that security footage.</p><p>*</p><p>Here and now, in the fight club, it all came rushing back: the security footage, the smell of blood. But it still didn't prepare him for the sight of the man down below in the pit starting to blur and twist and change. All of a sudden, there was some kind of big cat, a leopard or jaguar, ripping at the bear with its claws and teeth.</p><p>The shock that tore through David was mixed with gratification. <i>I was right. I wasn't crazy. I saw what I saw, and the rumors about this place -- it's real. It's all real.</i></p><p>He looked around wildly to see if anyone else was reacting, but no one looked shocked or even surprised. They were all caught up in a combination of excited bloodlust and gambling fever.</p><p>And it dawned on him, slowly, that a <i>lot</i> of people here had that particular graceful, feral quality that he associated with Frank. There was a muskiness in the air, which he had thought of as a locker-room smell -- but it was really more of a zoo smell. And yeah, there were two animals down there, really going at it, and that had to be part of it, but ...</p><p>He was suddenly, acutely even more uncomfortable than he had been before. </p><p>He might be the only human here.</p><p>No, surely not. But that leopard guy in the pit was definitely <i>not</i> the only person here who was ... like Frank.</p><p>This put a whole new spin on the bouncer letting him keep his gun. It was tucked into the waistband of his jeans, under his hoodie. The bouncer had patted him down, found it, and for a moment David had thought he'd made the world's biggest mistake -- the world's most lethal mistake -- but the guy hadn't said anything, hadn't even confiscated it. </p><p>Like it didn't matter. Like there were much scarier things than guns in here.</p><p>They <i>had</i> taken his cell phone, which in retrospect made a lot of sense. Definitely didn't want anyone taking pictures. Guns, though?</p><p>David was pretty sure a gun the size of the one he had wouldn't even leave a scratch on that bear down there.</p><p>Fuck.</p><p>David's fingers twitched, and he brushed the cuff of his sleeve, with the little sewn-in surprise he'd brought in with him. He'd lost the phone and thus his means of contacting Sarah on the outside, but he still had an emergency contingency plan, a hole card he could play only once. Backdoors and backups, plans on top of plans ... </p><p>Anyway, this made it even more likely that the rumors David had chased across the city were true. Frank was here, fighting under the fight-ring moniker The Demon Wolf. But he wasn't in the ring now, so where was he? David looked around, trying (without success) to figure out where the fighters went when they weren't fighting.</p><p>Down below, the bear and leopard were really going at it, and it was beginning to dawn on David, and apparently the rest of the crowd as well, that eight feet (give or take a bit) was not <i>nearly</i> high enough with a couple of apex predators fighting tooth and nail down below. Fur and spittle and blood flew; clawed, horrifically huge paws slapped at the rope barricade. Spectators fell back, yelling and crowding each other.</p><p>And then there was a sudden horrific <i>crack!</i> from the pit and an eruption of mixed yelling and booing from the crowd.</p><p>David looked down, drawn by morbid, horrified fascination. The leopard slumped limply to the charnel floor of the pit, while the bear savaged its throat. David expected it to turn back to a man, but it didn't. It just lay there, and the bear crouched over it for a long moment, then dropped it and took a couple of stumbling steps back. </p><p>David waited for the bear to change too, but it didn't either. Maybe it <i>was</i> just a bear? </p><p>Through the cheering, jeering crowd, a couple of the muscle-bound bouncer types appeared, dragging a steel cart on creaking wheels. The crowd started backing off, and more bouncers showed up, armed both with guns and long poles tipped with steel hooks. David watched with mingled horror and interest as a couple of them dropped to the floor of the pit and began tying ropes to the big cat's corpse, holding the growling, exhausted-looking bear at bay with the poles.</p><p>"Is that just a normal bear?" he asked the man next to him, who looked slightly more approachable and less terrifying than most of the crowd.</p><p>"Who, Yuri?" the man asked, contempt curling around the words. "You never heard of Yuri the Bear?"</p><p>"Er ... I'm new to this ... particular fight scene," David said. He tried to look belligerent and tough, channeling his inner Frank a little bit. </p><p>"Yuri's a has-been," the man on the other side of David snarled. "Can't even shift back. He's just an animal now."</p><p>"You're full of shit, Chad!"</p><p>David quietly ducked away as the two got up in each other's faces, yelling at each other about Yuri's relative merits as a fighter. Down below, the leopard was being hauled up, and the bouncers had started hosing blood out of the pit. The bear dropped into an exhausted crouch. Its fur was matted with blood. Through the fur, the metal of a collar gleamed, some sort of spiked thing.</p><p>David was sick, suddenly, with hatred of this place. Even if these were just ordinary animals, it wouldn't make it any better. This place was horrible. Obscene.</p><p>
  <i>The first thing I do when I get back to the surface is call in a tip to Madani. I don't care what she does with it; I don't care if they're all arrested or Animal Control shuts them down or what. This is criminal.</i>
</p><p>And Frank was here. Voluntarily? David shuddered; the implications for Frank's state of mind were horrible, but the alternatives were worse. And ... had that been just a tragic accident, or were these fights literally, always to the death? Nobody had seemed surprised.</p><p><i>What the fuck have I walked into?</i> he wondered, blank with horror.</p><p>He had to find Frank in all of this. Somehow.</p><p>"Two minutes to ring time," a voice abruptly thundered over a loudspeaker, and David winced; he had to stop himself from throwing his hands over his ears. "Place your bets now. The next fight will be Yuri the Bear versus The Demon Wolf."</p><p>Frank!</p><p>David looked around, then retreated back toward the wall where he could see better. On the far side of the ring, the crowd was parting. Okay, that was where they were getting the animals from. He managed to find a chair to hop onto, just vacated by its owner who had torn up a betting ticket in disgust. From here, David had about the best view that it was possible to have, between the poor light and the crowding.</p><p>There was a small procession headed toward the pit, a bouncer in front and behind, clearing the way with a couple of those steel-tipped poles. And in the middle ...</p><p>
  <i>Russo.</i>
</p><p>Billy Russo looked like he was having fun. Wearing a leather jacket, hair slicked back, he beamed at the crowd, even waved with his free hand -- the hand not holding a rusty steel chain.</p><p>The chain connected to a collar, and the collar was around the neck of what looked like a huge, shaggy gray dog the size of a pony.</p><p>... <i>Frank?</i></p><p>David wished he could see better. The enormous dog, wolf, or whatever the fuck it was slunk along at Billy's heels. It <i>couldn't</i> be Frank, David thought. Not that slinking, half-starved ... animal. Even from here, he could see how thin it was, how ragged and mistreated. Its fur was matted and it moved like it hadn't really had a chance to heal up from the last fight yet.</p><p>As Billy's cheerful gaze swung through the crowd, it occurred suddenly to David that Billy could ID him. If Billy saw him, the gig was up. He jumped off the chair and tried to lose himself in the crowd, working his way back toward the pit.</p><p>"This is the last fight of the night," the loudspeaker boomed. "Yuri the Bear versus the challenger, the Demon Wolf! Yuri's got the advantage, but he's been through a few fights already, and the Wolf is fresh."</p><p>He hadn't looked that fresh to David. He looked like a starved, maltreated zoo animal. There was nothing of Frank about him.</p><p>
  <i>That's not Frank. I was wrong. I mean, I wasn't wrong about Frank being a werewolf, I guess, but Frank can't possibly be THAT werewolf.</i>
</p><p>David glanced toward the door. So tempting, so nearby.</p><p>But that was still somebody. Someone's son or daughter, someone's brother or sister; someone who had been a person, before all of this happened to them.</p><p>David reminded himself that Sarah was waiting outside, at their agreed rendezvous spot. He had told her not to come for him; he'd left her with Madani's private number. He figured that, if he didn't come back by the agreed-upon time, it was about 50-50 that she'd actually stay out there, or call for help and then come in after him. </p><p>Maybe more like 20-80.</p><p>Damn it.</p><p>He pushed his way toward the edge of the pit, and got there just as Billy reached the opposite edge. David drew back into the crowd, pulling the hoodie closer around his face to avoid being seen. Billy was busy anyway, dragging the snarling, fighting wolf to the edge of the pit. The bouncers helped, using the steel-tipped poles to bully and torment the struggling animal.</p><p>David still couldn't tell whether it was Frank or not, but his hands curled involuntarily into fists as the wicked hooked ends of the poles caught and grabbed at the wolf's matted fur and its ropy-muscled legs. One of its shoulders moved awkwardly, as if it was slightly dislocated, or had broken and healed wrong. It was snarling softly, but one of the snarls turned into a whining yelp of pain, and David's shoulders rose up around his ears.</p><p>It couldn't be Frank. Frank wouldn't be doing this. Frank would have escaped already, probably having killed a dozen of these guys in the process.</p><p>Right now David hardly cared if someone firebombed the place, as long as he got himself and Frank out first.</p><p>Billy twisted the chain and collar, choking the wolf, but it was still fighting, trying to pull back from the edge. "Get in there, damn you; I've got a lot of money riding on this," Billy growled, and he pulled out something David could barely see -- but he figured it out an instant later, when there was a sharp crackle and a shrill yelp, and the wolf tumbled over the edge into the pit. </p><p>Billy stepped back, swinging a long metal rod -- a cattle prod or similar. He tapped it lightly against his leg and looked down with a lopsided smile.</p><p>The wolf struggled shakily to its feet. The chain was still attached to its collar, trailing on the floor. Across the pit, the bear was standing up too.</p><p>David's breath caught in his throat as it sank in fully that if that <i>was</i> Frank, he was about to have to fight a much bigger opponent in a fight to the death.</p><p>David could see the wolf more clearly now, without the crowd and Billy Russo in the way. Its ribs showed beneath the matted, patchy fur. It was huge -- David remembered how big it had looked compared to Billy, its bony back coming up to his waist -- but the bear still dwarfed it. </p><p>There was no way it could possibly win.</p><p>David reached cautiously behind his back and touched the cold steel of the gun. He wasn't sure what it would do to the bear, but maybe he could -- distract it, at least? Or get in a lucky shot? He'd been spending time on the range, since everything went down with Frank.</p><p>
  <i>Yeah, and then you find out what these people do to anyone who messes up their little fight club.</i>
</p><p>David swallowed, and let his fingers slip off the gun. Maybe it was time to play his hole card. But he was only going to get one shot, and he didn't want to blow it too early.</p><p>Meanwhile, the wolf and the bear circled each other slowly, the wolf slinking around the edges of the pit, the bear lumbering with a hitch in its stride, its bloody fur leaving streaks on the concrete sides of the pit. As the wolf passed under him, David saw that the fur was matted and bloody around the collar. It wasn't just a collar; it was some kind of spiked control collar as well, an electric-shock collar or something, embedded in the wolf's bleeding neck.</p><p>He was going to fucking <i>kill</i> Billy Russo.</p><p>Speaking of which, where had the asshole gotten off to? David had taken his eyes off him for a minute, and now he was gone, vanished into the crowd. Surely he must be around here somewhere; he had an interest in the fight.</p><p>There was a sudden deep, ursine grunt from down below, and David looked quickly back into the pit. The bear had taken a swipe at the wolf. David couldn't tell if it had landed or not. The wolf was limping, but it had been limping just as badly before. </p><p>However, something had changed. There was a watchful, waiting quality to the wolf's furtive movements now, and as he watched that, David began to feel a slow sinking horror crawling through his insides.</p><p>
  <i>That's Frank.</i>
</p><p>It was impossible to say what made him so sure. There wasn't, there couldn't be, a physical resemblance. But that waiting calm, the way the wolf seemed to be sizing up the bear's every move, its yellow lupine eyes following the bear, taking in everything ...</p><p>It was so Frank that it hurt. Literally hurt. David swayed forward and clutched at the rope around the ring, the coarse fiber biting his palms.</p><p>That was Frank. That was Frank down there, starved and beaten and electric-shocked and abused, for six months.</p><p>It was impossible. Some part of his mind refused to believe it. And yet, he couldn't deny the evidence in front of his eyes.</p><p>That was Frank.</p><p>David had found him.</p><p>Found him ... perhaps only to lose him. But now that David recognized him, there also wasn't a doubt in his mind that Frank was going to win this fight. Well ... maybe the slight shadow of a doubt, edged with worry. But only the faintest shadow. The way Frank was moving, the cautious, wary way he sized up his opponent ... that bear wasn't going to know what hit him.</p><p>And then all of a sudden, it was as if all the data Frank had been gathering fell into place, and he erupted into motion, springing toward the bear's throat in a single fluid movement.</p><p>The bear was taken completely by surprise. So was David. He wouldn't have thought Frank could possibly move like that in his condition, that complete and utter grace, that impossible speed. But --</p><p>He had seen it before. He'd seen it on the video, when Frank was beaten and bloody and broken. Why would it be any different now?</p><p>Snarling, teeth flashing, the wolf tore into the bear's thick hide. The bear retreated, flailing with its paws.</p><p>"David Lieberman," said a quiet voice at David's shoulder.</p><p>David flinched so violently he nearly fell into the pit. He whipped around, reaching for the gun, but the edge of a hand struck his elbow and his hand fell away, tingling and numb.</p><p>"Hello, old friend," Billy Russo said, smiling at him. "You brought a weapon in? Oh well, sometimes people do. They don't have much of a problem with that here, as long as you don't make too much trouble, or at least confine the blast radius. It's an anything-goes kind of place."</p><p>He lashed out, his fist connecting just under David's ribs. David sank forward with a wheeze, and he was dimly aware of Billy's hands moving behind his back, disarming him. He staggered back and leaned into the ropes, trying to straighten up.</p><p>Below him, there was snarling and a deep-throated roar. He wanted to look, but he was struggling to breathe and didn't dare take his eyes off Billy Russo, who was now pocketing David's gun.</p><p>"What <i>are</i> you doing here, I wonder?" Billy asked quietly, leaning forward. Around them, the spectators had reached a fever pitch of excitement, yelling down at the combatants. No one was paying any attention to the drama playing out at the ringside.</p><p>David pushed himself back from the edge, staggering and then getting his balance. "I'm here for the same reason you are," he gasped out, managing to catch his breath somewhat. "Just watching the fights."</p><p>Billy's lips drew back from his teeth in something like a smile. "So you aren't here about an old friend?"</p><p>They both turned to look down into the pit. Neither the wolf nor the bear seemed to have the advantage. The wolf darted in, fangs flashing as it tried to bite; the bear, bigger and slower but hard to damage, slashed back with its huge paws, tipped with scimitar-curved claws.</p><p>"He's not the Frank Castle you knew," Billy said, his words just audible beneath the roar of the crowd. "You know that, right?"</p><p>"Still looks the same to me," David said, and Billy barked a short laugh.</p><p>"You know, Frank and I have a complex history," he said, turning to look down into the pit. He put an arm around David's shoulders companionably. "All I really wanted, believe it or not, was to have Frank work with me again, like in the old days."</p><p>"Sounds like there's a 'but' coming," David murmured. His gaze was riveted on Frank in the pit, the graceful, impossible speed -- how could anything, or anyone, in that kind of shape <i>move</i> like that?</p><p>"Some things are inevitable," Billy said quietly, looking down as well. "Water runs downhill. The sun returns in the spring. And Frank Castle <i>will</i> kill again. It's how he's made. You know that, don't you?"</p><p>"I know he saved my life and my family's lives," David said. "That's all I need to know."</p><p>"More often than you know," Billy said, and David stiffened within the cage of Billy's faux-friendly arm.</p><p>"What's that supposed to mean?"</p><p>"How do you <i>think</i> I held him here? Back in the early days, that is. Before he became ..." Billy waved a hand. "This."</p><p>"You are a fucking lunatic," David said between his teeth. "I hoped he'd killed you."</p><p>"He never got the chance. All I wanted was to work together, you know that? Frank, with his unique talents ... you know, he really got a chance to show them off in Cerberus Squad. We were all a little bit different, there."</p><p>David drew in a slow breath through his teeth. "He got away from all that."</p><p>"Did he? You never really do. But you wouldn't know that. Combat, and the camaraderie of brothers in arms -- you can only really understand if you've been there. No one else will ever have what Frank and I have."</p><p>Down below, the wolf had -- somehow, impossibly -- gotten the upper hand. It (Frank) was on top of the bear, savaging it, ripping out hunks of fur with savage jaws.</p><p>"I understand enough," David retorted. "I understand you're holding him against his will, and I'm telling you right now that he's leaving with me."</p><p>"You think you're going to save him? Oh, David," Billy said, and he laughed. "There's not much left to save, is there?"</p><p>"Fuck you," David said between his teeth.</p><p>"He wouldn't go with me voluntarily, so there was really only one choice. I had to unlock the killer inside. Break him, I guess you'd say. He's feral now, Lieberman. There's nothing left of the man you came for."</p><p>David's stomach lurched. "I don't believe that."</p><p>"Really? Just watch."</p><p>The bear shifted abruptly, shimmering in an instant from a huge shaggy creature to a man -- large, scarred, bearded, and naked, with shaggy blond hair. "Mercy," he choked out, in a voice that was the uncomfortable rasp of someone who spoke rarely, tinged with a Russian accent. "Let me go -- I --"</p><p>The wolf tore out his throat in a great rush of scarlet blood.</p><p>David wrenched his gaze away as a roar went up from the crowd. His heartbeat thumped in his ears. For a moment he thought he might faint.</p><p>"See?" Billy murmured in his ear. "He kills every opponent now. It just took a while for us to get there. He is an unstoppable killing machine. Frank as he always was, and now can be again. My partner, again. He's almost ready for me to take him out in the field with me."</p><p>David blinked his eyes mercilessly as tears softened the harsh edges of the savage, raging crowd, and splintered around the bare light bulbs dangling from the ceiling. "There's something really wrong with you," he ground out.</p><p>"Really? I'd say it's the rest of the world that's wrong. Soft, weak, undeveloped. The strong will always win, and now --"</p><p>The movement came faster than David had a chance to prepare for.  Billy kicked him in the back of the knees, buckling his legs, and grabbed him by the back of the shirt and flipped him up over the railing.</p><p>There was a brief, terrible moment of disorientation and falling and the awful anticipation of pain, and then he smacked into the concrete floor with an all-over agonizing shock. </p><p>He'd landed badly; sick pain shot up his arm when he tried to move his right hand, and his knee dazzled him with pain. The floor was damp, soaking through his jeans and his abraded palms. The rank charnel-house smell was much stronger here. And the wolf that had been Frank Castle was looking at him from atop the pale, dead body of its latest victim.</p><p>"He doesn't know you!" Billy called down. He sounded triumphant. "He doesn't have any idea, anymore, who you once were to him. All he knows is me, and he knows that whenever he's put in this pit, anything else in it with him is trying to kill him."</p><p>Turning around, he shouted to the crowd, "There's one final match tonight! Anyone want to take bets on how this one is going to turn out?"</p><p>Staring at Frank across the bloody floor of the pit, David murmured, "I'm betting on you, Frank."</p><p>Frank crouched slightly, the mobile gray ears lowering. His eyes weren't Frank's color; they were a clear amber. David had somehow thought he'd see Frank in the wolf's eyes, the same way he saw the wolf in Frank, but there was no recognition there. </p><p>"Frank," David said quietly. Wolf-Frank's ears flattened completely. There was fresh blood matted along the fur of his jaws and chest from the fight with the bear, layering on top of the dark, dried blood from old fights, old hurts.</p><p>The crowd's eager bloodlust was a distant roar from above them. David tried to tune it out.</p><p>"You know me," David said, and he made the deliberate choice not to get up, thus making himself a target and a threat. Instead, struggling slightly, he stretched his leg out in front of him. His knee was a throbbing mass of pain. That was going to make getting out of here really fun. </p><p>Some rescue this was.</p><p>Frank-wolf stepped carefully off Yuri's body, one slow, slinking step at a time, not toward David directly, but off at an angle to the side. It was that same cautious assessment that David had watched him do from above.</p><p>Somewhere behind those flat yellow eyes, there was a mind that was taking it all in. David refused to consider the possibility that there was nothing left of Frank in that mind anymore. He'd seen Yuri shift back, in spite of the peanut gallery's assessment that Yuri couldn't turn back from a bear anymore. Frank could do it too.</p><p>"You <i>know</i> that you know me, Frank." David turned his head to follow Frank's slinking progress along the wall. There were both cheers and catcalls from above, and David realized that some of the onlookers were cheering for him. Well, why not? From their perspective, it was a good underdog fight. Maybe they thought he turned into some kind of fierce animal, he thought, and in spite of himself, he laughed. </p><p>Frank's ears, which had come up slightly, flattened again.</p><p>"Sorry I didn't bring you a sandwich," David said. "I know how you get about that. Sarah sends her love, by the way. Or at least her best wishes. And Leo and Zach -- remember them?"</p><p>Frank's ears flickered, lifting to listen, then flattening back against his long lupine skull. His tail was low, clamped along his back leg.</p><p>"You look like hell, Frank, just so you know," David went on. He had to rotate his body to follow Frank's progress along the wall. He really didn't want Frank behind him, where David couldn't see him. Twisting around and leaning back, he tried to catch himself on his bad wrist without thinking about it, and gasped involuntarily in pain. Frank's ears flicked forward. "Yeah. Ow. Falling seven or eight feet onto concrete hurts. You just did it, so I'm sure you can appreciate that."</p><p>He had to turn his head quickly to catch Frank padding on around, reappearing from the other side, a little bit closer. It suddenly occurred to David to wonder if Frank had learned to, in essence, play with his food -- tease it along, create a better experience for the audience -- but he dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. That kind of deliberate showmanship wasn't Frank. He was just being careful.</p><p>"Are you hurt?" David asked. "You look like you are. Come here. I'll take a look at it, use the ol' opposable thumbs, huh? Not that I'm great at first aid, as you know. But I gotta be better than these assholes, don't you think?"</p><p>No answer. Just that pacing, that silent prowling, which was starting to raise the hairs on the backs of David's arms and neck.</p><p>It <i>was</i> Frank. But also, it wasn't. It was Frank with everything except the watchful, animalistic parts of himself stripped away. Feral, as Billy had said.</p><p>But feral didn't mean unrecoverable. Even the human version of Frank had been all but feral when David first met him. And David now knew, better than he had before, what that really meant for Frank, and how far back he'd come.</p><p>"I patched you up once," he said, and Frank's ears nearly went fully erect from their flattened position this time, perking up to listen. "Went and got Curtis -- remember him? Curtis Hoyle? Your old buddy? You know that name?"</p><p>It was just so hard to tell how much was getting through. Wolves weren't like dogs. David had never really understood how different they actually were. Dog body language was so much more expressive. And, well ... Frank. Who wasn't that expressive at the best of times.</p><p>Up above, the crowd was getting restless. There were as many boos as cheers, and something clattered on the floor between Frank's front legs and rolled away, making Frank jump and the hair along his spine bristle. It was a beer can.</p><p>"Don't pay attention to those bastards," David said, keeping his voice as level as possible. In some sense, it was like that time tied to the chair all over again -- stay calm, try to explain everything, don't set off a chain reaction you won't be able to stop. Except this time Frank really wasn't the problem. He was just ... curious. Interested. Wary. But not really vicious. At least David didn't think so.</p><p>Frank, when David first met him, <i>had</i> been vicious -- an animal backed into a corner, in part by David himself. He was less so now. And that made David smile to himself just a little. Billy didn't know the first thing about Frank and how feral he could get.</p><p>"C'mon, Frank," David said. He lowered his voice. "Sarah is outside, waiting for us. You remember Sarah, right? Let's get out of this shithole, huh?"</p><p>Frank's furry gray ears perked all the way forward. He was listening, David thought. He was less wary and aggressive than he had been just a few minutes earlier.</p><p>"Son of a bitch," Billy snapped from above, and he leaned down with the cattle prod, dangling precariously over the rope to thrust it at Frank's furry spine. "<i>Fight,</i> damn you!"</p><p>Frank jumped away from the sudden goad, lupine jaws snapping at empty air.</p><p>"Damn it, leave him alone!" </p><p>Forgetting himself, David scrambled to his feet. Frank jerked back and his ears flattened, but right now David was too pissed to care. He barely even noticed the sharp stab of pain from his injured knee. </p><p>"You think you're so big up there, huh?" David leaned down and scooped up the beer can. "Well, enjoy this, you son of a bitch!"</p><p>The one sport David actually had been not half bad at was softball. His right wrist was out of commission, but he was still a halfway accurate pitcher with his left hand. It was no fastball, but he bounced the can off Billy's forehead.</p><p>Billy looked more amazed than upset. Some of the booing in the crowd turned to laughter. The wolf's defensive body language unclenched a little; it looked surprised too, as much as a wolf could.</p><p>David took advantage of the moment's distraction to take a few steps closer to Frank.</p><p>"Listen," he said softly. "I know you're in there. I'm sorry we don't have more time to work this out, but I'm just going to have to ask you to trust me. You saved my family. I trust you. Now trust <i>me</i>, Frank."</p><p>The crowd was getting restless again. Looking up, David saw that Billy had drawn a gun -- David's gun -- from his jacket pocket. Damn, but David was regretting bringing that thing with him.</p><p>"He's a predator," Billy called down. "The smell of blood drives him mad. Doesn't it, Frank?" And he aimed the gun at David's legs.</p><p>Frank snarled. David flinched back, but it wasn't directed at him. Instead, Frank threw himself in a powerful leap at the edge of the pit, at Billy. </p><p>Startled, Billy squeezed off a single shot. The report was deafening in the enclosed space. David flinched again, instinctively, but there was no pain, and he couldn't even tell if Billy had managed to hit Frank. But Frank had gone berserk, snarling and raging, trying to claw his way up the concrete side of the pit.</p><p>"Hey!" one of the bouncers yelled. "No gunplay! Take that kind of thing outside!"</p><p>Billy switched to the cattle prod, trying to use it to fend off Frank, pushing him back into the pit. Two of the bouncers closed in as well, thrusting with those steel hook things. Frank snapped and raged and yelped in pain, twisting David's heart.</p><p>But it was also a damn good distraction. And right now he needed one.</p><p>In the search at the door, the bouncers hadn't found the little electronic gadget tucked into the lining of his hoodie cuff. It wasn't broadcasting a signal at the moment, so there was no reason they should have. He brought the cuff up to his mouth and ripped at it with his teeth, tearing out the seam Sarah had sewn.</p><p>The gadget wasn't much; after all, he'd been working under a deadline. All it did, once tripped, was send a signal to his laptop back in the car. And what <i>that</i> did was start a script running that would execute a piece of code he'd spent two days writing and inserting through a back door into the municipal power system, which would shut down the substation nearest to the fight club.</p><p>David pushed the button.</p><p>He hadn't been able to test it, and there was a tense instant of uncertainty before the room was plunged into absolute blackness.</p><p>For a moment, the noise in the room fell into total shocked silence -- and then panicked chaos broke out above. Frank's snarling had stopped, and there was too much noise for David to figure out exactly where he was. He felt his way forward through the darkness. The blood smell was choking in the dark.</p><p>"Frank?"</p><p>His fingers brushed coarse fur.</p><p>"Hey, Frank. No biting now, okay?"</p><p>Movement, in the dark, brushing against his leg and hip. David swallowed against a sudden dryness in his throat. He <i>did</i> trust Frank, no matter what shape Frank was in. He didn't think Frank would hurt him. But Frank was also hurt and sick and confused, and this was exactly the sort of situation that was going to make it worse -- the crowd's noise, the confining darkness. David was braced at any moment for the feeling of those powerful, blood-covered jaws ripping into him.</p><p>But nothing happened. Frank barely moved as David groped his way along Frank's furry body, trying not to think too much about the prominent ribs and the knots of scar tissue.</p><p>"Listen, Frank, I'm going to boost you out of here, okay? Then I'll climb up after." Somehow. He was pretty sure that he could do it; there was rusty metal sticking out of the walls of the pit, crumbled places in the old concrete to give him some purchase. And it wasn't <i>that</i> deep. He just didn't want to think about how it was going to feel, doing it with his wrist and knee in this kind of shape. </p><p>"You gotta help me here, Frank. I boost, you climb."</p><p>He still wasn't sure how much Frank could understand, but when David got an awkward armful of wolf and started to push, the strong muscles under the fur abruptly tensed and erupted into movement. Frank scrabbled at the wall of the pit, and chips of concrete showered on David. There was a moment's frantic movement, rank fur against his face, and then Frank must have gotten purchase with his front paws, because he was gone.</p><p>"Wait for me up there!" David yelled after him, suddenly panicking. Once Frank was out of the pit, there was every chance instinct would take over and he'd just take off.</p><p>Maybe he hadn't thought this plan through.</p><p>Such as it was.</p><p>But right now, he just needed to get <i>himself</i> out of the pit. He clawed at the concrete, grabbed onto old rebar, felt something in his wrist give unpleasantly before he managed to heave himself over the edge of the pit. Panting, he dragged himself out, feeling every bruise.</p><p>"Frank?"</p><p>It wasn't completely dark up here. There was dim emergency lighting over by the exit, and the flicker of flashlights and a few cell phones that had escaped confiscation. But no one was paying any attention to David. People bumped into him in the near-dark, cursing and jamming up at the exit.</p><p>People, and ... not-people. Fur brushed his arm, and he started to turn, Frank's name on his lips, only to see the gleam of an enormous cat's eyes in the dark. David stumbled backward and bumped into the scaly hide of something huge. A rhino? Hippo? Something else ran under his feet and he yelped, and then nearly fell over a heap of discarded clothing.</p><p>A lot of the crowd was still human. And a lot of it ... wasn't.</p><p>"Fuck, fuck, fuck," David muttered under his breath. He staggered away, fighting his way through the crowd of mingled people and apex predators. Something's hot breath brushed across the back of his neck. If he didn't get shot or stabbed, he was going to get eaten.</p><p>But he wasn't leaving without Frank. <i>Couldn't</i> leave without Frank.</p><p>There was no getting through that crush around the exit. He retreated instead, toward the back of the room, and fumbled in his pocket for the penlight flashlight they'd also let him keep. Billy had brought Frank from this direction, so there must be something else back here -- quarters or holding cells for the combatants, maybe. Would Frank have gone this way?</p><p>"Frank?" he called.</p><p>"You," a voice snarled, and someone grabbed the back of his hoodie.</p><p>David lashed out wildly, but a fist drove into his kidney and he doubled over, gasping. He was dragged up by a two-fisted grip on his shirt. There was just enough dim light to make out Billy Russo's twisted face.</p><p>"He's gone," Billy snapped. "All the work I've done, everything I've tried to do, and you blew it up."</p><p>"Gone where?" David wheezed out. He tried to get a breath. "Listen, I want to find him, you want to find him -- maybe we can work together." </p><p>He must have sounded as insincere as he felt, because Billy's only reply was to drive another fist into his stomach.</p><p>David went down hard, choking. He thrashed around and rolled over onto his back, looking up just in time to see the gleam of the barrel of a gun.</p><p>"You were useful for leverage," Billy said between his teeth, "but I guess I don't need y--"</p><p>At that point, he went down under a couple hundred pounds of snarling, furious werewolf.</p><p>David had no idea, in the near-darkness, exactly what was happening or who had the upper hand. There was snarling and yelling and a couple of gunshots, which he desperately hoped hadn't hit Frank. Meanwhile, he had all he could deal with just trying not to be trampled beneath the milling crowd of both humans and animals. By the time he managed to get to his feet, staggering and clutching his injured wrist, he'd lost track of both Frank and Billy.</p><p>"Frank!" he shouted. Nearby, there was snarling. He stumbled toward the sound, pushed his way past a goddamn <i>ostrich</i>, and all of a sudden a great shaggy shape slammed into his legs, nearly sending him toppling over again.</p><p>"Frank," he gasped out, half-sobbing. The wolf leaned against his legs -- it was Frank, it <i>had</i> to be Frank. He could feel the prominent ribs heaving against his legs as Frank panted. David hesitantly put a hand on the thick, coarse fur. Patches of it were wet. He tried not to think about what with.</p><p>"So you think we could get out of here? You know any back doors?"</p><p>At that, Frank lurched into motion. They made their way through the fringes of the crowd, most of whom had now gravitated toward the exit; there was almost no one near the back, and no emergency lights. David felt around in his pocket for the flashlight and found it at last; by some miracle it hadn't fallen out through the last ten minutes of falling and struggling. He switched it on, lighting up a dirty concrete floor and crumbling brick walls. Frank glanced back at him, eyes flashing in the light.</p><p>"Where are we?" David asked quietly.</p><p>Frank, of course, didn't answer. They went down a short tunnel, and David became aware of a growing stink. Suddenly they were passing cells -- small, dank, filthy. Most of their doors stood open. Some were shut, solid metal doors on some cells, barred jail-style doors on others. </p><p>Frank's lupine body language had grown even more subdued here. With his head and tail down, he slunk along, staying as far from the cage doors as possible. The smell was so bad that David had to breathe with his mouth open.</p><p>Fucking hell.</p><p>"I hope you killed the shit out of that asshole," David said under his breath. Frank didn't react.</p><p>In one of the locked cells, something that David would have mistaken for a pile of old rugs or straw abruptly stirred, blinking eyes that caught the edge of the flashlight's beam. A bear? Big cat? It was bigger than wolf-Frank, but it shrank away from the light, and David, as if terrified.</p><p>David hung back, trying to figure out if he could open the door, but it was securely locked -- these were people in these cells, of course, not animals, so a simple catch wouldn't do.</p><p>Frank circled back around and bumped at David's leg.</p><p>"Yeah, I'm coming, I'm coming," David muttered. He wrenched his gaze away from the pitiful creature in the cell. Madani, he thought. He'd get this place raided and shut the whole obscene business down. Not that he was naive enough to think it wouldn't just pop up somewhere else. But ... at least he could help some of these prisoners. Maybe. Hopefully.</p><p>To his vast relief, they left the cells behind and came to a rusty metal door. Frank stopped there and looked expectant, and David choked down an inappropriate laugh; it was just so <i>much</i> like a dog wanting to be let out. But the stench from the cells killed any humor that he might have been able to find in the situation.</p><p>"Through there, huh?" He tested the door and found it locked, but when he pulled on it, rust and cement dust flaked away, and he was able to force it open; the door fit badly in its frame, and it looked like it had been closed hastily and incompletely by whoever shut it last. He found himself facing a flight of steep concrete stairs.</p><p>Frank went up ahead, navigating cautiously with his four legs. David limped after him. His bad knee felt tight and hot. He shone the flashlight ahead to try to give Frank a little light. Lumpy black shadows danced on the walls, and the chain dragging from Frank's collar clinked along the stairs.</p><p>"Wouldn't this be more convenient if you'd just, you know, change back?" David suggested.</p><p>Frank's ears flicked back to suggest he was listening, but he made no other response.</p><p>David swallowed heavily. Whatever Frank had been through in the last six months -- and the emerging picture was an ugly one -- he refused to believe that, as Billy had seemed to think, the human Frank was gone forever. Frank was in there. He recognized David and understood him. That had to count for something, didn't it?</p><p>The clink, clink, clink of the chain paced their steps to the top of the stairs. When they got there, David said, "Wait." He felt his way around the damp, matted strap of the collar until he found the buckle. This, at least, was easy enough to release with just his bare hands. He had to peel it away from Frank's neck, and it came away wet. David's stomach lurched brutally. At least the poor light made it less horrible than it would otherwise have been ... marginally, anyway, as long as he tried not to think too hard about it.</p><p>"Jesus Christ on a motherfucking skateboard," he muttered, dropping the collar with a full-body shudder. Frank, who had made no sound during the collar extraction, leaned against his leg again, but this was less comforting than it was an awful reminder that human Frank would never have done that, and the more doglike Frank acted, the less of human Frank was likely left in there. Still, David buried his hands in the thick fur over Frank's bony shoulders, a much-needed moment of contact for both of them. </p><p>"Let's get out of here, okay? Sarah's waiting for us on the outside."</p><p>*</p><p>He had never smelled anything as wonderful as the cool night breeze when they finally emerged by way of a rusty grating over an arched brick vault half buried in overgrown vegetation. It didn't actually smell <i>good</i> -- they had been following a trickle of nasty water down the floor for the past few minutes, until finally they got to the point where it dribbled out and was lost in a tangle of weeds and trash. But he was <i>out.</i> They were out.</p><p>After a few minutes of floundering, they found their way to a fence, and then to a chained-shut gate that David was able to pry open enough that they could squeeze through. He hoped there weren't any security cameras around. Another thing to check on ... later.</p><p>It took him a few minutes to get his bearings, but after that it was a short, fast walk to where he had left Sarah in the car. The lights, he noticed, were back on. He had figured it wouldn't take long.</p><p>Sarah jumped and gave a little shriek when he tapped on the window of the car. The locks popped and she scrambled out of the car and threw her arms around him, pulling back a moment later as he grunted in pain. </p><p>"You're ... wow. Filthy."</p><p>"I know." He tried to take a step and his leg almost buckled. He was doing fine until he stopped moving.</p><p>"You're hurt! David --"</p><p>"Let's get out of here," he interrupted. "There are people back there who might be following us." By scent, perhaps, like bloodhounds; who knew what these people were capable of? The skin on the back of his neck crawled. He opened the door to the backseat. "Go on, get in."</p><p>Sarah, fixated on David, hadn't seen Frank until that moment. She gasped and stepped back. Frank, with a resigned air, wedged his massive body into the backseat.</p><p>"David ..." Sarah leaned down and peered through the open door to get a better look at the huge wolf awkwardly trying to turn around in the backseat. "Is that ... Frank?"</p><p>"It's Frank."</p><p>David was expecting a lot more pushback, but Sarah didn't say anything else, just got behind the wheel. She pulled out of the lot and merged into the flow of traffic headed for the Brooklyn Bridge. </p><p>Frank was a great, dark bulk in the backseat. David kept twisting around to see him, and finally put a hand back to touch Frank's thick fur. The car reeked with a musky animal smell -- sweaty, greasy, bloody,  a rank, sick smell.</p><p>As the lights of the bridge loomed ahead of them, Sarah said, "I didn't believe you."</p><p>"But you do now?" David asked. Frank was reassuringly warm under his hand. He could feel muscles shifting slightly over bone.</p><p>"I ... I don't know what to think." She glanced at him. "That is -- that's Frank."</p><p>"Yeah."</p><p>"You're sure."</p><p>"I am," David said. "He saved my life down there. Billy Russo was there."</p><p>Sarah sucked in her breath. "Did he recognize you?"</p><p>"I ... <i>think</i> he's dead." He wished he knew for sure. "As soon as we get back to the house, we're calling Madani and getting a raid on that club. She can do whatever she wants with it. That place is evil."</p><p>At the same time, he hoped he wasn't throwing too many of Frank's own kind to the ... well, "to the wolves" seemed vaguely inappropriate. But damn it, there wasn't a single innocent person in that place. Anybody who was a party to what had gone on down there didn't deserve his sympathy.</p><p>He just wanted to be home.</p><p>*</p><p>They had left the downstairs lights on, and the sight of the homey glow through the dark made something inside David relax. They had <i>done</i> it. They had Frank right here with them, and it wasn't okay, and <i>he</i> wasn't okay, but it was going to be.</p><p>Sarah pulled into the garage. When the engine shut off, Frank raised his head and pricked up his furry ears.</p><p>"Yeah, we're home. My home. Remember this place?" David tried to think of the last time Frank would have been here. It all seemed so impossibly long ago.</p><p>It was hard to tell if Frank recognized where he was. The strength that had sustained him throughout their flight was starting to fade, and when David opened the car door, there was a long dazed moment when he just stared at nothing before his great furry bulk shuddered and he jumped down from the car. He wobbled, and David put a hand on his back. He was shivering slightly.</p><p>Under the lights in the garage, he had a better look than he'd gotten so far at Frank's thin, ragged condition. Sarah came around from the other side of the car, and made a soft sound in her throat when she saw him.</p><p>"Oh, Frank." She went down to her knees, and held out her hand, exactly as if he was a stray dog. Frank pushed his nose into her palm, and then took a stumbling step forward, and leaned his head into her lap.</p><p>David's chest knotted up with a weird mix of emotions. It was touching and at the same time, disconcerting, seeing Frank that trusting, that open. Human Frank would never have been like that, and it made him wonder all over again: how much of it was the wolf, and how much of Frank was left inside?</p><p>"Can he turn back?" Sarah asked. She was petting Frank's ears, then seemed to realize what she was doing and took her hand away.</p><p>"I don't know. He's been ..." David stopped himself and took a breath. "A lot's happened. Let's get him inside."</p><p>Sarah nodded once and straightened up, though she kept a hand on Frank's head. "Come on, then. We can wash him in the downstairs bathroom. It's pretty big."</p><p>David opened the door from the garage into the house. He was so completely and utterly expecting no one that he made no attempt to be quiet, and then the sound of music and TV from the living room hit him like a hammer blow.</p><p>He moved forward in two quick steps to put himself between Sarah and Frank, and whoever was in the living room, reaching for the gun he didn't have. And then Leo popped up in the doorway to the kitchen.</p><p>"Mom! Dad! You're home! Zach's upstairs, he just went to bed, and I <i>did</i> make him brush his teeth, but --"</p><p>"You kids are supposed to be at my mother's!" Sarah declared, pushing past David.</p><p>"Grandma brought us back over a couple of hours ago. I thought we were just staying for the evening. I didn't know you guys were going to stay out so --" Leo broke off; her eyes went wide and round. "Is that a <i>dog?"</i></p><p>"No!" David and Sarah said together, trying to get between Leo and Frank. Frank didn't help, trying to push around them.</p><p>David had one brief instant of true doubt; he had trusted wolf-Frank implicitly with his own life, even with Sarah's, but his kids were a whole different matter. But he didn't really have a chance to do anything, because Leo dropped to her knees and threw her arms around Frank's neck, and Frank laid his enormous head on her shoulder, making her sway under his weight.</p><p>"You got us a dog!" Leo rhapsodized, while David and Sarah looked at each other. David guessed that Sarah's helpless expression was reflected on his own face. "Oh my gosh, he's huge! He's wonderful! He's <i>so</i> big. He ..." She pulled back a little, her nose wrinkling. "He really stinks, Dad."</p><p>Sarah darted in to get a hand on Leo and pull her back a bit. "That's because he needs a bath, sweetheart. And we're going to give him one, while you go to bed."</p><p>But a few things were dawning on Leo, as she looked down at her damp hands, smeared with mud and traces of darker things. "He's really <i>filthy.</i> What happened to his neck?" She tried to look closer at the matted fur around Frank's neck, but Frank pulled away from her for the first time. "Is he hurt? Is he a stray?"</p><p>Sarah planted both her hands firmly on her daughter's shoulders. "It's a very long story which we are going to tell you in the morning. Your dad and I are going to take care of this, while you go to bed."</p><p>"But it's not even a schoolday tomorrow," Leo complained. "Can I help? What happened to him? Did someone beat him? Wow, Dad, you're totally filthy too."</p><p>"David, please put Ffffff-- please take him to the bathroom, would you?" Sarah said over her shoulder.</p><p>"Are we going to keep him?" Leo was asking plaintively as Sarah herded her out of the kitchen. "He didn't have a collar!"</p><p>"C'mon," David murmured to Frank, who was now sniffing his way across the fronts of the kitchen cabinets. Seeing him in the kitchen really brought home how big he was. His back came almost all the way up to the countertops. A lot of that was his long legs, but <i>still.</i> "Let's go get you cleaned up. And then you can eat something, and we'll make up the guest bed or ... something. Do werewolves sleep on beds or on the floor? Or is that a stupid question? It's probably a stupid question. Forget I asked it. We'll make up the bed and also make up the floor and you can choose which you like better."</p><p>He knew he was babbling, but he needed the sound of his own voice to keep himself centered. Everything was crashing on him: everything he'd seen at the club, and the pain of his own bruises and wrenched knee and messed-up wrist, and Frank -- mostly Frank, Frank who'd been captive in that horrible place for months.</p><p>But Frank followed along docilely enough to the bathroom. There wasn't much room, David found, when the door was shut, closing them both in. Frank's great shaggy length seemed to fill the room from one end to the other.</p><p>"Can you change back?" David asked. He tried to crouch down, but that didn't work well with his hot, painful knee, so he sat on the closed toilet lid instead. Frank had begun to pant, shuffling nervously. David got the feeling he didn't like having the door closed. "Listen, all of this would be a whole lot easier if you'd just turn human again, okay? Sarah won't barge in. She'll knock. We can get you cleaned up and you can tell us what you need."</p><p>Frank didn't answer. He nosed at the shower curtain. His body swayed; it seemed that only his rigid self-control was keeping him on his feet.</p><p>"Right," David muttered. "I guess we do this the hard way. Can you get in the tub? Do you <i>fit</i> in the tub?"</p><p>There was a tap on the door as he was trying to manhandle Frank into the tub without hurting his wrist even more. "David?" Sarah said through the door. "Is it okay if I come in?"</p><p>"Knock yourself out, honey! I could use a hand in here." </p><p>Sarah opened the door and paused. "Oh, my." She came in with an armload of towels. "Leo's upstairs. Er ... are you <i>sure</i> he won't change back?"</p><p>"I wish," David sighed. Frank was as long as the bathtub, and filled it completely. There was going to be water all over the floor. "Do you remember that spray shower attachment, the one we used to have? Do we still have it?"</p><p>"I think it's under the sink," Sarah said, and bent down to look. The floor, David couldn't help noticing, was covered with mud and dark streaks of blood ... not all of it Frank's. The bright bathroom lights made him feel acutely filthy as well.</p><p>"What <i>are</i> we going to tell the kids?" Sarah asked as she rummaged under the sink, digging through toilet cleaner and packages of sponges. "Leo's so excited, but, I mean ... obviously we're not adopting Frank as a dog, although if he doesn't change back -- I suppose it's not possible to just tell the kids that we happened to name the dog Frank."</p><p>Frank's ears lowered slightly at this. "He can understand us, you know," David said. With Frank in the bathtub, more or less, he sank back on the toilet lid and started painfully struggling out of his hoodie and the equally filthy T-shirt underneath.</p><p>"He can? I just assumed, I guess ..." Sarah straightened up with the coiled spray-head hose in her hands, and trailed off, staring. "Oh, <i>David."</i></p><p>David looked down at himself. His torso was a map of scrapes and bruises, and the injured wrist had swollen up and turned a variety of colors.</p><p>"Yeah," he said, and suddenly the weight of exhaustion bore down on him, bowing his shoulders. "It's been a night."</p><p>Frank turned his head, and his broad, scarred nose nudged gently at David's arm. David gave him a push, not hard. "Get back, Frank, you're filthy."</p><p>"Do you need a hospital?" Sarah asked. She leaned under the sink again and got out the first aid kit.</p><p>"I'm fine. Worry about Frank, not me. Actually, if you could get Frank washed, I can start working on this."</p><p>"I can do that." She opened the kit and put it on the edge of the sink, then dropped a kiss on his hair before stretching over Frank to hook up the spray hose to the shower head. "How are we going to do this? There's going to be water all over the floor ..."</p><p>There was indeed, and Sarah's blouse and jeans were quickly soaked, while David sat on the toilet lid and mopped at his own hurts with disinfectant and a wet hand towel. Filthy water from Frank's fur swirled down the drain. Frank put up with it throughout Sarah scrubbing large handfuls of shampoo into his fur and washing it away, even though it must have stung his many injuries. In fact, David got the impression that Frank was really enjoying it. He rested his big head on the edge of the tub, eyes half closed as Sarah dug her hands into his fur.</p><p>"David, what <i>are</i> we going to do if he can't change back, ever?" she asked quietly.</p><p>"I guess the kids get a dog after all," David said. Frank cracked an eye open. "Yeah, if that bothers you, maybe try being human again, huh?"</p><p>Frank just shut his eyes wearily. Sarah poured more shampoo into her palm.</p><p>"What did they <i>do</i> to him?" As she worked her way farther along on washing Frank, past the superficial level of getting the filth out of his fur and down to the detail work of cleaning the sores under his heavy pelt, she began to look like she was near tears. "This is horrible. I can't believe anyone would do something like this."</p><p>"And it wasn't just him." David finished getting an inflatable splint around his wrist, working awkwardly one-handed. "There were cages in there, with other people like Frank. I gotta call Madani. I was going to do it when I got home but it slipped my mind."</p><p>He heaved himself off the toilet lid. Sarah looked up, on her knees in a pool of soapy water on the bathroom floor.</p><p>"It's the middle of the night. She won't be up."</p><p>"I get the impression the woman hardly ever sleeps," David said wryly. He put a hand on Frank's wet head -- Frank cracked his eyes open for a minute -- and kissed the top of Sarah's head, then draped a towel around his shoulders and went out to the living room.</p><p>His phone was probably unrecoverable, but on general paranoia principles he kept a couple of activated spares around, so he dug up one of those, put on a sweatshirt because he was starting to shiver, and then hunted up Madani's number.</p><p>He was sitting on the bottom step of the stairs, listening to it ring, when there were soft footsteps coming down from above. "Dad?" Leo said quietly.</p><p>He held up a finger, because Madani's voicemail had just answered. David balked at trying to say anything he needed to say in a recorded message. "Hey, it's Lieberman, call me back," he said, and hung up. "Hi, bunny. You should be in bed."</p><p>"What happened to you?" Leo asked quietly, resting her head on the railing. "Where were you tonight? Is it about Frank?"</p><p>Duty and family, love and loyalty nearly tore him in two. He desperately wanted to tell Leo the truth -- he <i>owed</i> her the truth, her and Zach both. But he also owed Frank his silence. And that awful place, those reeking pens ... David didn't need to bring that home to his family. To any of his family. Particularly his kids.</p><p>"Yeah, I was looking for Frank," he said after a minute, hoping to stick with a middle ground, somewhere between lies and truth. "Your mom and I were talking to some people tonight. I think we might be seeing Frank pretty soon." He hoped.</p><p>He was unprepared for Leo's reaction, a sudden bright explosion of joy, throwing off her weariness. "He's alive?" she said, sitting up straight. "Do you know for sure?"</p><p>David stared up the stairs at her and was hit, all over again, by the realization of how much his children had been through, and how much they carried with them. He had been, on some level, assuming that basic childhood naivety and optimism was carrying them through this. They were just kids, they didn't really understand ...</p><p>But they <i>did</i> understand, and all this time Leo and Zach had been dealing with the same fears as their parents, that Frank was dead somewhere, that it was too late.</p><p>David held out an arm, and Leo slithered a few carpeted steps down the stairs and rested against his side. He kissed her hair.</p><p>"I am absolutely, one hundred percent sure that Frank is alive," he said into her hair. "And we're going to get him back." The awareness of the falsehood tugged at him; they <i>had</i> him, he just couldn't tell her. He rationalized it fiercely. They didn't know if Frank would ever change back or not, and if he didn't, it was some version of Frank that they'd gotten back, but not the one she knew.</p><p>And he would never be able to tell her.</p><p>"Sorry, Dad, but you really kinda stink," Leo said, squirming a bit. "What happened? Were you in a fight?"</p><p>"Sort of." David released his tight hold, but Leo stayed where she was, nestled against his side. She'd been very cuddly since he'd come back, often clingy. Zach had reacted the opposite way, by pushing him away.</p><p>He wished he could tell her. She'd love it, he thought. Real life werewolves. It was a wonderful magic world that he couldn't share with his own daughter because he also had to keep Frank's secret.</p><p>And he'd promised himself no secrets between himself and his family, ever again.</p><p>He turned his face into her hair. She still smelled like a kid, that clean little-kid smell, but it was starting to be tinged with scented shampoos and perfumes, the smells that meant she was growing up. He closed his eyes.</p><p>There was a sudden loud thump and a splash from the bathroom, and a sharp cry from Sarah, and a hoarse yelp and, lower, a muttered curse that sounded like ...</p><p>"Frank?" Leo said, her head shooting up. "Was that <i>Frank?"</i></p><p>David's mouth opened, but he was so completely tangled up in an agony of indecision about what to say to her that he didn't say anything, and anyway, Leo was already flying down the stairs.</p><p>"Leo, wait --!"</p><p>David tried to run after her, but his bad leg buckled, and he didn't make it in time. The bathroom door slammed open and then immediately slammed shut again, with Sarah yelling, "Out, out! No kids!"</p><p>"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" Leo wailed. She turned around and ran into David, bouncing off his abused stomach and chest; he caught her with a grunt of pain. "Dad, that's Frank in there, isn't it? Why is Frank in the bathroom with Mom? <i>When</i> did you find Frank? I'm gonna go tell Zach!" And she was off, flying toward the stairs.</p><p>"Leo!" David started to shout after her, then gave up. There was next to no chance that Zach wasn't awake now anyway.</p><p>There was some splashing and low voices from the bathroom, and then Sarah slithered out, soaking wet with a towel around her shoulders. Her cheeks were very pink. "I think you might be the one who should be helping out in there," she said.</p><p>"Don't need help," came what was distinctly Frank's voice, hoarse and surly, before she pulled the door shut behind her.</p><p>"Our daughter is upstairs waking up Zach right now," David said. "I couldn't stop her."</p><p>"Damn it. Oh well."</p><p>"At least she hasn't asked about the dog yet."</p><p>Sarah gave him a rueful smile. "I'm going to go dig up some of your old sweats for Frank, if that's okay?"</p><p>"Yeah. Please."</p><p>Sarah left, and David knocked on the bathroom door. "Yeah, what?" Frank snapped irritably. His voice was as rough as if he'd swallowed a cup of gravel.</p><p>"Frank, it's David. Can I come in?"</p><p>A long silence, then Frank muttered, low, "Yeah, why not."</p><p>David slipped cautiously inside. Frank looked up, his entire body going tense and curling up slightly as if, even knowing it was David, he still expected to be attacked. </p><p>He was sitting in the bathtub, naked. There was a towel over his lap, and wet towels everywhere, as well as puddles of water on the floor. Frank had dragged the first-aid kit over where he could reach it, and it looked like he'd been dabbing disinfectant on himself when David came in; there were damp wads of gauze on the edge of the bathtub, sticky with blood.</p><p>The lingering effects of the abuse Frank had taken were evident enough when he was a wolf, but jumped out in stark relief on his human body, and David tried to force himself not to stare, without a lot of success. Frank's body was a mass of layered, half-healed cuts and bruises, one on top of another, in an endless variety of shapes and sizes. There were old burns, claw marks, and a few boot-shaped bruises that made David want to find whatever was left of Billy Russo and push him into the pit with one of his own caged fighters.</p><p>Most of it was at least somewhat healed, bruises going to browns and yellows, burns puckering into pinkish scar tissue, although David glimpsed the wet red of fresh blood on Frank's arm (bullet? bear attack?). It was his neck that Frank had been working on, a clotted mass of gore girdling his throat.</p><p>There was a long, tense moment when Frank looked like he was on the verge of bolting out of the bathtub and going -- somewhere, anywhere. His entire skinny, beat-up body was one corded mass of tension.</p><p>"That's, uh ..." David made a gesture. "Do you want -- help? It's probably easier to have someone else do that for you."</p><p>A muscle in Frank's jaw jumped, and he reached for the gauze again. His movements were jerky and uncertain, and he hesitated before picking it up, as if he had to remind himself that he had hands instead of paws. "I got it."</p><p>David scooped up some of the towels and moved them out of the way. He moved the open first-aid kit off the toilet lid so he could sit there. "Frank. Let me."</p><p>Just like that, Frank capitulated -- the speed and totality of it was actually terrifying. He leaned his head against the wall, tipping it back, exposing his neck.</p><p>David swallowed at the mess of oozing gore that was revealed. He'd <i>offered</i>, damn it; this would be a wonderful time to throw up or faint. He opened a clean square of gauze and wet it from the bottle of betadine. Teeth clenched, he began dabbing at the mess on Frank's neck, trying to pretend he was just cleaning one of Leo or Zach's scuffed knees after a fall off a skateboard. Nothing worse than that.</p><p>"You ... aren't good with blood," Frank said slowly, his throat moving under David's light touch. It sounded like he was feeling his way around the edges of things, finding his way back to those memories.</p><p>"Yeah, well, I've gotten a lot better at it since I've been having to deal with you. Tell me if this hurts."</p><p>"It doesn't hurt," Frank said quietly. </p><p>Which was obviously a complete and total lie. But Frank didn't move, and in fact, his eyes were drifting shut, as if he was relaxing into the touch.</p><p>David wondered how long it had been since anyone had touched him gently, or touched him at all, except to beat or attack him.</p><p>Frank was also shivering slightly, and it occurred to David that, although the bathroom wasn't particularly cold, Frank was wet and also hurt and sick and thin as a famine victim.</p><p>"If you're done washing, we could move this to one of the bedrooms," he suggested. "It might be easier that way, so we won't have to move you after."</p><p>It took long enough for Frank to respond that David was about to repeat it when Frank gave a slight nod and began struggling to sit up.</p><p>It was very clear that whatever reserves of strength and willpower had gotten him this far were on the verge of giving out. David had to put an arm around him, trying not to hurt him. Frank was all knobby ribs and muscles and bruises. Also, David wasn't in especially fantastic shape himself right now. He wished he'd had an opportunity to wrap his knee; pain zinged through it every time he took a step.</p><p>"You're hurt," Frank muttered into his ear.</p><p>"Not like you're hurt."</p><p>To his surprise, Frank made a sort of grating half-laugh. "Ain't a competition."</p><p>David found himself grinning. With Frank leaning on him, he cracked open the door and peeked out to check for wayward family members. No one was downstairs right at the moment, and he could hear Sarah and the kids' voices from upstairs.</p><p>"There's a guest bedroom downstairs. I'm going to put you there, okay? We might have to move some stuff; Sarah and I mostly use it to store junk that won't fit in the garage."</p><p>But he discovered when he and Frank limped three-legged-race style into the bedroom that Sarah had already been there. The bed was made up, with a set of David's old workout clothes neatly folded on the end. There was also the other first-aid kit, the bigger one from upstairs, open on the bed.</p><p>God, he loved that woman.</p><p>David closed the door behind them and pulled back the covers one-handed so Frank could sit on the edge of the bed. Frank went with that peculiar docile quality that David had firmly filed away in his mind to deal with much later, if ever. It might just be that Frank was too exhausted to put up a struggle. David sat beside him and draped an afghan over Frank's shoulders before reaching for the first-aid kit.</p><p>"So I realize this is a question that you never give a straight answer to under the best of circumstances, but is there anywhere that hurts in particular?" he asked as he resumed cleaning up Frank's neck. "Anything needing urgent attention. You really should be in a hospital, you know."</p><p>"Hospitals aren't great for people like me," Frank rasped out, gazing past David's shoulder.</p><p>It was the first open acknowledgement of the thing they both knew. David took a breath.</p><p>"Who else knows?" Frank asked, very quietly, before David could say anything.</p><p>David concentrated on dabbing disinfectant onto Frank's endless array of cuts and sores. There were marks across his shoulders that made it clear he'd been beaten with a chain. David tried not to think about it, tried to focus on the steady movement of his own hands. <i>Just like cleaning the gravel out of Zach's elbow after he fell off the bike that time.</i></p><p>He wanted to ask questions. So many questions. All the questions that had shoved around in his mind during the time he was searching for Frank, wanting to know how werewolves <i>worked,</i> and how many of them might exist in the world. His questions had doubled and tripled after seeing that underground horror show and realizing just how many of them existed in the world, and in so many varieties too.</p><p>But ... not now. David had an intensely inquisitive mind and it had gotten him in trouble before, but he did, some of the time, know when to lay off.</p><p>"Just me, and now Sarah," he said quietly. "The kids don't. I think Madani might suspect. I don't know how much she knows. There was ... footage. In the bunker." Frank sucked in a harsh breath. "I destroyed it. I tried to do it before anyone saw it."</p><p>"Thanks," Frank murmured.</p><p>"Yeah, well ..." Guilt pushed to the surface. "It shouldn't have taken me six months to find you."</p><p>Frank looked a little bit dazed. "Is that how long it's been?"</p><p>He couldn't have had any way of telling time down in that hell-pit. It must have all run together. David didn't answer except with a nod. He had moved on to Frank's wrists, where there were marks similar to the mess on his neck, except partly healed. It looked like he'd been kept in chains for a while.</p><p>Frank was quiet for a few minutes while David worked on cleaning up his wrists and the long, fresh bear scratches across his arm, and then said softly, "How long have you been looking?"</p><p>"The entire time," David said, not looking up. "Well ... okay, not all of it. Most of it. I had to get the family on board with it this time. I wasn't doing it without them." He laughed a little. "Absolutely no arguments there, by the way. They were just as eager as I was. So ... yeah. We've been trying to find you, Frank. We all have. We weren't just going to leave you there. I just wish we'd known ..."</p><p>He trailed off, because how much difference would it have made, really, if he'd learned of that chamber of horrors before he did? It might have given him even more urgency, made him put even more of his life on hold to devote time to the search for Frank. But he'd pretty much done that anyway. He hadn't known exactly what was happening, but his imagination had supplied plenty of horrifying fodder for what Billy Russo might be doing with Frank.</p><p>Frank made a soft sound as if he wanted to say something, but then it died away, leaving them in a sort of companionable silence as David worked on cleaning him up.</p><p>This lasted until there was a soft tap at the door. "Frank? David?" Sarah called softly through the door. "I heated up some soup. Can I come in?"</p><p>Frank jerked as if he was coming out of some kind of daze, drowsing while sitting up. "Pants," he muttered, trying to reach across David.</p><p>"Just a minute!" David called. "Come on, she's seen everything already, you know."</p><p>But he gave Frank a hand getting dressed anyway; Frank was too weak to do it properly on his own, though it was also clear that he planned to keep trying until he managed it. David had already done about all he could do for Frank's endless array of injuries -- and it just kept going; he found out in the process of getting Frank into the sweatshirt that Frank had a shoulder that kept dislocating itself and also what looked like broken fingers, except Frank wouldn't let him get a good look at anything.</p><p>"Let me tape these up at least. I can do it while you eat."</p><p>Frank shook his head obstinately. "It'll heal. I heal fast."</p><p>He did, at that, David thought. He had never seen anyone up and walking around after some of the appalling shit Frank had done to himself, or had done to him, over the time Frank had known him.</p><p>"It doesn't mean you can't be comfortable in the meantime, though," he said as he limped over to let Sarah in.</p><p>Sarah slipped in and pushed the door shut behind her. "The kids are out there." She looked harassed. "I don't want them to see Frank like this. But I'm also not sure how long I can put them off. Er ... Frank ... do you feel up to visitors yet?"</p><p>Frank looked the absolute furthest thing from being up to visitors, in particular since David had noticed his body language going stiffer and tenser as soon as Sarah came in. It wasn't her; he <i>knew</i> her, he trusted her. It was just having more than one person in the room with him.</p><p><i>It is going to take a long damn time for him to get over this,</i> David thought, hanging back as Sarah -- who seemed to have parsed the situation as soon as she came in -- approached Frank quietly and slid her tray onto the bedside table. She went down to one knee to put herself below his level rather than looming over him as she showed him what was on the tray: soup, toast, hot tea, and a bottle of leftover painkillers from wrenching her back a couple of years ago.</p><p>"If you don't need any help, we can just leave you to eat by yourself," she said. "Does that sound best? And maybe the kids could see you for a minute or two when you're done? But they don't have to. David and I can keep them out 'til morning."</p><p>"I don't mind." Frank's voice was back to that cracked rasp again.</p><p>David didn't really think that was true, but he wasn't going to challenge Frank on it. Not right now. Instead he gathered up the scattered gauze wrappings, closed the first-aid kit and put it on a chair, and left with Sarah's arm around his waist.</p><p>They almost tripped over the kids outside.</p><p>"Is Frank in there?" Leo asked. "Is he awake? Can I see him?"</p><p>"<i>Wow,</i> Dad," Zach said, staring at his face. "You have a shiner almost as good as the one I got when Mikey Sanchez hit me that one time."</p><p>"Who's Mikey Sanchez and why are you getting in fights with him? No, you know what, don't answer that." </p><p>"There are sandwiches on the table," Sarah said, ever practical. "Since we're all up, which apparently we are, let's eat something."</p><p>She had even thought to set a couple of ibuprofen beside David's plate ... very welcome, with his wrist and knee throbbing in an odd syncopated rhythm. David found that he was starving, and the kids dug in, with frequent glances in the direction of the guest bedroom. Sarah, who said she'd already eaten, crouched beside David's chair with an Ace bandage and a cold pack, and rolled up his pants leg. The kids enthused wildly over the various astonishing colors his knee had turned.</p><p>"Think you need an X-ray?" Sarah asked quietly as she wrapped it.</p><p>David shook his head, though it was more of a "not sure, can't be bothered to decide tonight" than an actual no. "I'll see how it feels in the morning."</p><p>"Who beat you up, Dad?" Leo asked through a mouthful of ham sandwich. "And <i>why?"</i></p><p>"We'll show them," Zach declared, and mimed punching the air.</p><p>"No one is beating up anyone on my behalf," David said.</p><p>"And where's the dog?" Leo wanted to know, and David's stomach sank. Of course it was too much to hope for that they'd been too distracted with Frank to think about it.</p><p>"There's a dog?" Zach asked.</p><p>"A huge dog. Wait, did you find the dog in the same place you found Frank? Why did they have a dog?"</p><p>"I bet it's a drug dealer's dog," Zach said. "Where is it? I want to see it."</p><p>"Did the people with the dog beat you up, Dad?" Leo asked.</p><p>"How come I'm not supposed to get in fights when you get in fights all the time?"</p><p>David resisted the urge to put his head down on the table and avoid the barrage of questions by sleeping for a week. "Listen, kids, you need to not ask Frank any questions about where he's been, all right? He's been held prisoner by some very, very bad men. Your mom and I got him out, but he's not going to want to talk about it."</p><p>"Which bad men?" Leo asked. "The same ones that tried to hurt us before?"</p><p>That wasn't an easy question, and David was still mulling over how to answer it when there was a sudden thump and crash from the bedroom. Sarah, who had been rolling down David's pants leg, jumped up. "I'll get it," she said, and hurried from the kitchen. There was the sound of her tapping on Frank's door, and a conversation too low for David to make out.</p><p>The kids had gone hushed and fascinated, staring in that direction. They'd never known Frank the way David had, he reminded himself. All they knew was Pete. But Leo, more than her brother, had some idea of who Frank Castle was, and what he was capable of. Her questions, he noticed, had trailed away to nothing.</p><p>Sarah came back in a moment, carrying the tray with the dishes jumbled on it. She set it on the counter, wrung out a dishcloth in the sink, and grabbed a bottle of carpet spray from under the sink. "Kids, clean up the dishes, please," she said, and jerked her head at David.</p><p>David followed her out into the living room, to the soundtrack of subdued grumbling behind him. "What happened?" he asked quietly.</p><p>"He knocked over the soup bowl, and then the rest of the tray when he tried to clean it up. Not a big deal. But he's <i>clumsy,</i> David. He's really having trouble with things like spoons. It's bothering him a lot too; you can tell." She looked up at him with troubled eyes. "Can we deal with this? He needs help we can't give him."</p><p>"I think right now, a lot of it is just that he's used to having paws, not hands."</p><p>"You know I'm not wrong."</p><p>"I know," he sighed. "Look, we can talk to Madani about it in the morning, maybe. I called her, but she hasn't called me back, so she must be actually asleep for a change. And I'm not suggesting that we mention specifics. But we could put some feelers out and see if there's some kind of help we can get for him." He ran a hand through his hair. "It's Frank, though. I don't know how well you got to know this side of him as Pete, but he really, really isn't going to want to go to the hospital, let alone therapy. And I mean, what kind of therapy do you get for someone whose problem is that they were kept in a cage and treated like an animal for months? Especially when they actually <i>were</i> an animal for most of that time?"</p><p>Sarah caught herself wringing the dishcloth between her hands, dribbling water on the floor. She leaned into David's shoulder for a minute, and then tapped lightly on the door. "Frank? It's Sarah and David. Can we come in?"</p><p>Frank's answer was a noncommittal grunt. David and Sarah exchanged a glance; then David cautiously pushed the door open.</p><p>There wasn't any obvious mess, and Frank was in bed, sitting up with his back against the headboard. David pretended not to notice his flinch when they came in.</p><p>"Sorry," Frank said quietly.</p><p>"I wish you'd stop apologizing," Sarah said. "You remember we have kids, right? It's not as if cleaning up messes is a rare occurrence around this household."</p><p>It was more than that, David thought as Sarah knelt to scrub at the carpet, brushing off his attempts to help. He sat on the end of the bed and looked at Frank -- shoulders hunched, looking almost as scared and hunted as he'd looked in the fight club. </p><p>Frank hated being weak, hated being dependent, and most of all he hated being out of control of himself. It occurred to David to wonder if Frank might have preferred being dropped off at a hotel for the night to being brought back home with them.</p><p><i>Yeah. No.</i> He thought of the way Frank had at first drawn back and then relaxed under his touch in the bathroom. Frank <i>needed</i> this, even if he didn't know that he did; he needed to be somewhere safe, with people that he trusted, at least to the extent that he trusted anybody.</p><p>The silence was getting awkward. His brain cast around desperately for a conversational topic and pounced on his curiosity about the whole werewolf thing. "So hey, if you bite someone, will they turn into a werewolf?" he asked.</p><p>Sarah looked up in shock. "David!"</p><p>Frank looked startled too, and then he smiled, just a little twitch at the corner of his bruised, dry lips. "No," he said. "I was ..." His wary, shadowed gaze darted to Sarah; then he looked down at his hands in his lap, plucking absently at the blanket over his legs. "I was born like this."</p><p>"It's amazing," Sarah said. "I mean, it really is. You must have to keep it a secret."</p><p>"Usually," Frank muttered, and David felt his ears burn.</p><p>"Look, I didn't <i>mean</i> to find out. It just happened."</p><p>"Story of your life," Frank said, and there was another of those hesitant little smiles, tugging up the corner of his mouth.</p><p>David grinned back, and for a moment there was a quiet, companionable feeling in the room, broken by a tiny, hesitant tap at the door.</p><p>"Pete?" Leo's voice said through the door. "I mean, Frank? Mom, Dad? Are you in there?"</p><p>Frank got that trapped-animal look again. </p><p>"They don't have to come in," Sarah said. "It's up to you. There is absolutely no reason why they need to be in here."</p><p>Frank hesitated, then shook his head. "Nah. They can come in. I don't mind."</p><p>Sarah patted his leg and went to crack the door open. "Okay, you can come in," she said. "But be <i>quiet,</i> understand? Five minutes, then back to bed."</p><p>The kids crept into the room. To their credit, they were very quiet, staring at Frank with wide eyes. The smile that he gave them was wider than the one he'd given David, but clearly more forced. It made David think of Frank when he was being Pete, as he was when David had seen him on the household cameras -- the way that Pete was Frank but also not. Frank with the rough edges carefully and tentatively papered over.</p><p>"Hi?" Leo said in a small voice. "Do you remember us?"</p><p>"Course I remember you. Couldn't forget you. Come on over here."</p><p>The ice broke a bit, and the kids came over and plunked down on either side of David on the edge of the bed. After all their insistence on seeing Frank, now they'd turned suddenly shy.</p><p>"You teach your dad a few things about fixing stuff around the house?" Frank asked Leo, and she perked up.</p><p>"Yeah! I got to show him how to make the upstairs sink stop dripping all the time. It was <i>awesome."</i></p><p>"How'd you know to do that?"</p><p>"Internet," Leo said. "Duh."</p><p>"Hey, that was a joint father-daughter project," David said. He snugged an arm around Leo. "But she did most of it."</p><p>Zach squirmed against his side, not liking to be outshone by his big sister. "Hey, I got a blue ribbon on my school science fair project."</p><p>"Yeah? What'd you make?"</p><p>"It was on the life cycle of the honeybee," Sarah said. She'd put the cleaner aside and now she was sitting with her arms crossed over her knees, looking up at the scene on the bed and smiling.</p><p>"Hey!" Zach protested. "I'm telling this! Stop it, Mom!"</p><p>Looking at Frank, as the kids' cheerful voices filled the room, David was surprised to see that, far from looking harassed or stressed, he'd actually relaxed more than David had seen him so far. He was looking at them, making eye contact with them. He'd stopped that restless, twitchy thing he'd been doing with the blanket, pulling at loose threads as if he needed something to concentrate on.</p><p>And something in David began to untwist, too -- something bleak and tangled that had been tied into knots in his chest ever since he first walked into that dark, squalid arena.</p><p>Frank wasn't okay. Not yet. But David thought he was starting to be able to see the shape of what "okay" might look like -- for Frank, and for ...</p><p><i>For us too,</i> he thought, looking down at Sarah, at her rapt, glowing gaze on Frank and the kids.</p><p>Things couldn't just be put back into place like they were before. You couldn't be "dead" for a year and walk back into the life you left behind without a ripple. They had thrown six months of their lives into looking for Frank not just because they needed to find him -- although that, too -- but because it gave them something to focus on, something other than the way the broken pieces of their family refused to be forced back into the same shape they'd been before.</p><p>But their family <i>was</i> healing. Things were getting better. With their eyes set on finding Frank, none of them had really been focusing on the situation at home -- but now David began to realize that quietly, without any of them noticing, it had started getting better. They weren't back where they had been, and probably never would be, but they were slowly but surely getting closer to it.</p><p>Frank would get there too. Seeing the look on his face as he listened to the kids -- curious, warm, cautiously open -- David thought that Frank might even get there sooner than any of the rest of them. Or, at least, back to something like his baseline Frank kind of normal. He was tough, and resilient, and he'd already been through things that would have killed another man. He could get through this.</p><p><i>They</i> could get through this.</p><p>As the kids' initial surge of energy began to fade, sleep started catching up with them even as they talked over each other, trying to tell Frank all their childhood triumphs and woes from the last six months. Sarah smiled and got up off the floor. "I think it's time for certain people to go to bed."</p><p>"I've got this one," David said. He peeled the sleepy kids off the bed, and sacrificed his wrist and knee to the cause of picking up Zach, who was really too big for it but was also falling asleep. "Come on, guys. Frank needs to sleep and so do you."</p><p>He left Frank and Sarah talking quietly, and went upstairs with Zach draped on him sleepily and Leo plodding along beside him.</p><p>"But really, Dad," Leo said, yawning, "where did the dog go?"</p><p>"Long story," David said, putting it off onto his future self. "We'll talk about it in the morning."</p><p>He deposited Zach in bed -- Zach was already completely out as soon as he settled onto the pillow -- and then went to the next-door bedroom with Leo. Downstairs, there were quiet little clatters: Sarah moving around, putting things away.</p><p>His life, he thought. His <i>life.</i> He had it back, and he owed it to Frank, and he wasn't going to forget that. Not ever.</p><p>Leo yawned again as he turned down the covers for her. As he tucked her in, she plucked at the splint on his wrist. "I want you to tell me about it tomorrow, Dad," she said.</p><p>"I'm going to, don't worry." He sat on the edge of the bed, and brushed a hand across her cheek, sweeping back her hair.</p><p>"Frank's been through some bad stuff, hasn't he?"</p><p>"Yeah," David said. "But he's got us now, doesn't he?"</p><p>Leo nodded sleepily. David reached to turn off the light beside her bed, but his hand froze at a sudden, loud clatter from downstairs, followed by a crash.</p><p>Leo's half-closed eyes flew open, and she sat up. "What was that?"</p><p>"I don't know. Maybe your mother dropped something, or Frank did." David couldn't quite place where it had happened in the house. He got up and went to her bedroom door. Leo started to climb out of bed, and he shook his head. "No, stay here."</p><p>He opened the door and looked out into the dim hall, lit only by light coming up from the living room below. "Sarah?" he called down. "Honey? Need help?"</p><p>There was no answer, and a panicked drumbeat began to beat in the back of David's skull.</p><p>The door of Zach's room opened, and Zach peeked out. "Dad, what was that?"</p><p>"Get back in your room," David said, low. There was no sound at all from downstairs, and that wasn't right; he should hear Sarah down there. She should have answered him. Something was <i>wrong.</i></p><p>Frank ...</p><p>Except, no. He <i>trusted</i> Frank, damn it. It wasn't Frank.</p><p>Was it possible someone had followed them home from the fight club? He hadn't noticed -- but then, he'd been distracted with Frank in the backseat, and it wasn't like he was used to checking for tails.</p><p>"Leo --" he began, turning back into her room, and nearly yelped when he found her right behind him, wide awake again. "Bunny, go into your brother's room and stay with him, okay? Keep the door shut."</p><p>"Why?" Leo asked. "Dad, what's happening?"</p><p>"I don't know. Probably nothing. I'm just going downstairs to talk to your mom." He gave her arm a squeeze. "Go stay with your brother."</p><p>He watched until she'd vanished into Zach's room. Then he went to the top of the stairs. </p><p>From here, he couldn't see anything amiss. He couldn't hear anything, either. And that was still wrong. Sarah wouldn't be completely quiet down there. He ought to hear <i>something</i> -- footsteps, the clink of dishes, the little humming sounds she made when she was working contentedly on something around the house.</p><p>David suddenly and acutely missed the gun he'd left at the fight club. There was a second gun in the house -- David had been operating on the "just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you" principle for some time now -- but the one he'd taken with him was the one they normally kept in the bedside table of the upstairs bedroom. The other one was hidden in the kitchen, taped underneath the sink. Completely inaccessible to him now. He felt in his pocket for the phone -- but no, it was downstairs too.</p><p>And Sarah was down there. His <i>wife</i>. Half his heart was down there, and the other half was up here, and he didn't know what to do.</p><p>With a final, tormented glance at the kids' closed bedroom door, he started carefully and quietly down the stairs.</p><p>There was still absolutely nothing wrong as the living room came more fully into view. The front door was shut, and as far as he could see from across the room, deadbolted. They made sure the kids knew the doors needed to be locked whenever they were home alone. And he and Sarah had come in the garage, so nothing would have needed to be unlocked.</p><p>He reached the bottom of the stairs, trying to move as quietly as he could with his injured knee. The corners of the living room seemed to be full of shadows. The lights were on in the kitchen, but there was no one in sight. </p><p>"Sarah?" he called softly.</p><p>There was something dark on the door, a strange shadow he couldn't see clearly from here. He crossed the room, feeling oddly exposed. He just needed to check that it was deadbolted. </p><p>When his hand touched the doorknob, it came away sticky, and the door swung slightly ajar, a draft of cool night air blowing into the room.</p><p>There was blood on the doorknob. David's heart rate went into the stratospheres.</p><p>"Sarah!"</p><p>There was no answer. He spun around. From here, he could see the door to the bedroom where they'd put Frank. It stood slightly ajar, but there was no light on inside, nothing but darkness.</p><p><i>This is ridiculous,</i> he thought, heart pounding. He was sneaking around in his own house like a thief. It was going to turn out that Sarah was out on the porch putting out the recycling, or cleaning up the downstairs bathroom and hadn't heard him. The blood on the door was -- maybe she'd gone out to put out the trash, gotten some of Frank's blood on the door --</p><p>"Sar --"</p><p>It was a sound that caught his attention, a tiny intake of breath, one note off from a sob. David turned.</p><p>They were in front of the guest bathroom: Sarah and Billy Russo. Sarah's head was pulled back; Billy was holding her by the hair, and he had a gun pressed to her temple.</p><p>David's entire world froze.</p><p>Blood matted Billy's clothes and hair, and when he took a step back, pulling Sarah with him, one of his legs dragged and left a red trail on the floor.</p><p>"Where's the wolf?" Billy rasped out. </p><p>David's mouth felt like a desert. He opened and closed it; no sound came out.</p><p>There was movement at the top of the stairs. David looked up. To his absolute horror, the kids were peering down the stairs. He didn't dare motion them back, couldn't risk Billy finding out there were more potential hostages conveniently located nearby.</p><p>"Where is he?" Billy snarled. He yanked on Sarah's hair; she made an incoherent sound of pain and fear. </p><p>David managed to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth. "I don't know," he said. It was true; he had no idea if Frank was still in the bedroom or elsewhere in the house.</p><p>"You left with him. You know where he is."</p><p>Sarah gave her head a tiny shake.</p><p><i>What's that mean?</i> David wanted to ask. Don't answer? Don't give him away? Don't let this happen?</p><p>"Look," he said, holding out his hands, showing them empty and open. "I'm the one you want. Me and Frank, we're the ones you have a grudge against. My family has nothing to do with this. I'll trade you, straight across. Me for her."</p><p>This time Sarah's headshake was more emphatic. David refused to acknowledge it.</p><p>"You left with him," Billy growled between his teeth. "You can't fucking tell me you don't know where he went."</p><p>"I don't know where he is now," David said, in perfect honesty. He took a cautious step forward. "Look, I'm more useful to you as a hostage anyway. I found him once. I can find him again."</p><p>There was movement in the shadows behind Frank. Frank, wolf-shaped again, had just crept into view. It was all David could do not to stare at him; he had already almost forgotten how <i>huge</i> Frank was, especially contrasted against ordinary homey benchmarks like doorknobs and chairs. He was as tall as a Great Dane, but vastly more massive.</p><p>"So how 'bout it, Billy," David said, trying to keep his eyes fixed on Billy and not on the wolf creeping up on him from behind. "Let her go, take me, and let's go on a wolf hunt, all right?"</p><p>Billy blinked blood out of his eyes. "How 'bout instead," he said, giving Sarah a little shake, "we all three take a ride and you show me where he is before I perforate her pretty skull, huh?"</p><p>Sarah made a small whimpering sound and her eyes rolled back in her head. She went limp in Billy's arms, slithering toward the floor.</p><p>Billy cursed and tried to grab at her. David stared, not sure whether to lunge forward, and try to help, or -- he'd never seen Sarah faint before. Even when the kids were born --</p><p>Frank leaped.</p><p>His bulk slammed into Billy, who staggered sideways. The gun went flying, and Sarah, suddenly all movement again, scrambled away on her hands and knees. David flung himself at her and grabbed her and pulled her away while she clutched at him wildly, with a background soundtrack of Frank's low thundering growls and the crashing sounds as he and Billy rolled into the laundry room.</p><p>"Did you and Frank <i>plan</i> that?" </p><p>Sarah shook her head, her eyes wild. Shock was setting in, in the aftermath; she had begun to shiver violently. "No, but I knew ... knew he had to be around somewhere, probably behind us by the look on your face ... I think I'm going to be sick."</p><p>She didn't, but she doubled over as David rubbed her trembling back, crouched on the floor beside her. "Listen," he said, "let's call Madani, okay? This time we'll just keep calling 'til she picks up. She can come over and bring backup, and --"</p><p>He hadn't gotten any farther than that, when Frank burst out of the laundry room, literally thrown backwards, tumbling end over end and scrabbling at the floor with his claws. David had an instant to wonder how the fuck Billy had managed to do <i>that</i> when a tiger -- a fucking full-grown fucking <i>tiger</i> -- erupted out of the laundry room.</p><p>Well, David thought wildly, that sure explained how Billy had been able to survive being mauled by Frank-as-a-wolf at the fight club.</p><p>There was a scream from up the stairs. "The kids," Sarah gasped, her eyes flying wide open.</p><p>"Go," David said, giving her a push. "Get them into a bedroom. Somewhere safe."</p><p>"What are you going to do?"</p><p>All he could do was shake his head. Sarah finally yielded to his attempts to shove her up the stairs to some semblance of safety. The tiger and wolf were going at it now, slamming into the walls, shaking the entire house. They rolled into the kitchen. </p><p>Where was that fucking gun? David found it at last, halfway underneath the coffee table. He followed them through a trail of wrecked furniture, blood and hunks of torn-out fur.</p><p>There was a tremendous crash as the kitchen door was torn half off its hinges, and then they were out in the backyard.</p><p>David flattened himself against the wall, risked a peek outside before turning on the porch light. It didn't illuminate all the way to the back of the yard, and he could only catch flashes of fur as the combatants slashed and snarled, broke apart and came back together. </p><p>Worryingly, Billy seemed to be dangerously close to winning. He was considerably larger than Frank, and also fresher, while Frank was coming off months of starvation and abuse. Time after time, Billy wrestled him down to the grass, and David tried to take aim, but then Frank squirmed away with wiry strength, or tore at Billy's underside until they broke apart again.</p><p>There was a noise above him, the sound of a window being shoved open. David looked up and saw Sarah leaning out of the window, waving something which she then hurled.</p><p>It bounced off Billy's head.</p><p>It was a shoe.</p><p>"Find something else for me to throw, kids!" Sarah called over her shoulder. "We have to distract him!"</p><p>The sheer absurdity of it made David lightheaded as he watched his wife and kids pelt a full-grown tiger with a variety of small objects scrounged up in the bedroom: shoes, books, a plastic water glass, a kids' plastic set of travel games, Leo's soccer ball ...</p><p>None of it was capable of doing any actual damage, but it was at least interfering with his ability to attack unimpeded, like throwing up flak for fighter planes. For a minute David thought Frank had him, as Frank lunged and got his teeth into Billy's throat. Then Billy twisted around and pinned Frank, and his teeth closed on some part of Frank's neck. There was a terrific crack.</p><p>David's vision washed out briefly in red. He took aim and fired. He had a perfect shot at Billy's feline profile. Just like the damn targets at the range. <i>Squeeze, don't jerk ...</i> David put four bullets in him, and Billy shuddered, staggered a step forward, and collapsed.</p><p>David stumbled across the grass, his legs turning to rubber. Billy was huge even from a distance, but up close he was vast, a huge heap of fur blackened with blood. His eyes were half open, jaws parted. David pushed at him, then threw his weight against him. Beneath him, Frank struggled feebly, and at last was able to crawl out.</p><p>David's legs went out from under him. He collapsed, and sat in the grass staring at Billy's dead bulk. As with the dead tiger in the arena, he was somehow subconsciously expecting Billy to shift back, but nothing happened. David was only peripherally aware of Frank shifting human again, on all fours. Frank didn't even try to get up, just rolled over to sit beside David on the grass. After a moment, a hand hesitantly settled in the middle of David's back, between his shoulder blades.</p><p>"You hurt?" Frank's rough voice asked.</p><p>David took a couple of breaths, until he was pretty sure he wasn't going to be sick or pass out. "Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." He wasn't, but at least he was able to compartmentalize it, shove it back into its box. He turned his head to look at Frank, who was naked again, his ribs standing out under the old scars and fresh blood. Frank's left arm hung limply, black with blood in the dim light.</p><p>"And we just got you patched up," David said faintly, and Frank huffed something like a laugh.</p><p>*</p><p>"They tried to kill you with a trained tiger," Dinah Madani repeated carefully.</p><p>Dawn had broken over the canyons and valleys of the city. In the backyard, the great furry hulk of Billy Russo's body lay on a patch of lawn that David knew he, for one, would never look at the same way again. Maybe they could tear it up and do something else with it. Pave it, put in a basketball court. Zach had been showing some interest in sports.</p><p>"There were a lot of exotic animals in that place," David said. "I guess they thought it would be harder to trace back to them."</p><p>Madani turned to look at the dead tiger. Her slightly bemused team was swarming around it, wrapping it in a black plastic tarp, crouching and photographing the scene. David wondered what they'd do when they got Billy's DNA results back from the labwork. Maybe more questions, maybe a cover-up. Or how did DNA even work for shape-changers, anyway? Fuck. It was a problem for the future, not for now. He'd hacked government databases before, after all.</p><p>Anyway, he was still convinced that Madani knew more than she was letting on. It might never even come up.</p><p>Frank was upstairs in Zach's room. They'd decided that hiding him in one of the kids' rooms was probably the best way to go; the federal agents were at least <i>less</i> likely to go in there. Frank was also back in wolf form to hide better, though David figured there were potential problems either way. He didn't want to have to try to explain why he had an unlicensed wild animal in his house, especially with another one dead in the backyard. Madani was going to think he'd stolen Frank from the arena. </p><p>Maybe he could convince them Frank was a dog.</p><p>But so far, they hadn't gone up there. He'd left Frank lying on the rug in Zach's room, head up and ears alert, with the sleepy kids draped on his furry bulk. It was really unnerving just how <i>much</i> he trusted Frank with the kids, whether as a wolf or a human.</p><p>They'd gone through another round of cleaning up Frank last night, this time while having to fend off the freshly energized kids' new round of thrilled questions. David wasn't sure how much of what had gone on in the backyard they'd seen, or how long it was going to take before it really sank in that they'd just watched someone die. In the meantime they were far too excited about the whole concept of real-life werewolves to really care.</p><p>"Did a werewolf bite you?"</p><p>"If you bite people, do they turn into werewolves too?"</p><p>"Can you bite me?"</p><p>And so forth.</p><p>The questions had eventually died down just because the kids were too exhausted to keep asking about it, and David had been making coffee when Madani suddenly showed up at the front door with half a dozen agents. She had apparently gotten his and, subsequently, Sarah's repeated messages last night after all.</p><p>There was no real way around admitting that they had a dead half ton of tiger in the backyard, no way to explain how Billy had been here and was now gone. David fumbled his way around a cover story that probably sounded like he was high, but at least he could explain it on the grounds that he'd had one hell of a night. He tried to focus on the fight club as much as possible.</p><p>"Which you went to looking for Frank," Madani said. She had the same worn-out look as the last few times he'd seen her, with dark circles under her eyes, like she was getting even less sleep than he was. "Did you see him?"</p><p>"No," David lied, straight-faced.</p><p>"So you don't have any idea where Frank is at all? Or Russo?"</p><p>"No," David said, hoping he sounded convincing as her team hauled the tarp-wrapped body of the tiger out of his backyard. "No idea."</p><p>*</p><p>Once the feds finally cleared out, they all just crashed and slept for a while. The house was a wreck and David didn't really give a damn. The kids had already fallen asleep, and from what David could tell when he peeked in on them, Frank was too, so he just left them alone and went to see about sleeping for the next year.</p><p>Instead, he jolted awake, muzzy-headed and flailing, with the echo of gunfire ringing in his head. By the clock, he'd been asleep for a couple of hours, most of which he vaguely recalled was haunted with a shadowy menagerie of nightmare shapes.</p><p>Sarah slept deeply beside him -- maybe the deepest he'd seen her sleep in weeks; her nightmares were usually worse than his. David brushed his finger along her cheek, then dragged his stiff, aching body out of bed and limped downstairs to make a fresh pot of coffee.</p><p>It was hard to believe that it had been less than a day since he'd walked into the fight club hoping to find a lead on Frank. It felt like he'd aged years. He made coffee and sat at the table, hands wrapped around the cup, letting his mind go on autopilot. Just ... drifting.</p><p>Billy Russo was dead. The biggest remaining threat to his family's safety was gone. Frank was upstairs, alive and ... a werewolf. Definitely a werewolf. Which his whole family now knew about.</p><p>David scrubbed his hand through his hair. What the fuck <i>was</i> his life, even.</p><p>There were some soft sounds from upstairs. A toilet flushed. Then, a minute later, Frank padded down the stairs as a wolf, carefully navigating the steps, limping heavily on his injured front leg.</p><p>"Where do you think you're going?" David asked from the kitchen table. He wasn't sure if he had enough energy to get up.</p><p>There was no answer, at least not as such. Frank limped around the room, sniffed at the places where there was still blood and fur from the fight, and finally went and laid down by David's chair, leaning against David's leg.</p><p>David looked down at him. It was really a strange thing, but even though he knew they were technically the same person, Frank as a wolf <i>was</i> subtly different from Frank as a human. He was more expressive, somehow. More tactile. David couldn't have imagined human Frank doing what he was apparently doing now, which was either seeking physical comfort or giving it, or both. </p><p>But it was appreciated. David reached down a hand and sank it into Frank's fur. And for a long while they stayed like that, steady and calm, as the sunlight moved slowly across the wall, painting the room in shades of gold.</p>
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